Bioethics

Pushing Experimentation Without Consent

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The New England Journal of Medicine–ever more radically utilitarian, in my view–has an article by prominent bioethicists urging that some less dangerous (comparative effectiveness research) medical experimentation be conducted on patients without our consent. The call arises in the context of Obamacare and medical technocrats seeking to transform our hospitals, clinics, and medical offices into ”learning health care systems,” in […]

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Judge Says No to Hospital “Pull Plug” Demand

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Futile Care Theory (medical futility) permits strangers–doctors, bioethicists, etc.–to overrule a patient’s advance directive or decisions by family to maintain a patient’s life. Boiled down to its essence, it is a sign over the hospital ICU stating, “We reserve the right to refuse service.” Texas law explicitly permits futile care. But apparently not Florida’s. A […]

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Pushing Multi-Hospital Death Panels

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The medical/legal intelligentsia continues to promote empowering committees of “experts” to rule on which patients can receive wanted life-extending treatment and which should be refused based on “quality of life” and financial considerations. Now an article by Thaddeus Mason Pope in the New York Law School Law Review urges the creation of multi-institutional ethics committees to make […]

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Exposing Baloney of Stem Cell Sophists

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Ever since the great embryonic stem cell debate commenced at the end of the Clintion years, I have witnesses so many “scientists” and media cheer leaders claim that an early embryo is no different than the cells that are destroyed when you brush your teeth, e.g., just a cell, not a human organism at all. What […]

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Get Ready for a Busy 2014 in Bioethics

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My taskmasters at the CBC never allow me to rest on my laurels. Fresh off several years of stellar prognosticating, I am now forced to answer the question: “But what have you predicted, lately?” Okay, let’s take a look. Oh! Oh my. Please remember, the following predictions are what I see happening. They do not […]

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My Predictions in Bioethics Right Again!

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Can you believe a year has come and gone since I last told you what would happen, before it happened, in bioethics? Maybe it’s my increasing age, but time is passing too fast! So, how did I do? Not as well as in years past, but still an A-. Let’s take a look: The Affordable […]

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Francis Collins’ Big Think Big Cop Out

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Francis Collins has an opinion piece out over at Big Think asserting that he doesn’t want either “science” or “religion” to prevail over the other because “we need both kinds of truth.” He’ll get no argument from me there. But the piece, which raises one of the central issues of our time, is disappointing. Rather […]

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Fertility Alimony?

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In a recent New York Times editorial, Sarah Richards raised some provocative questions as to whether fertility treatment should be covered in divorce settlements. In her op-ed “Alimony for Eggs,” Richards profiles a New Jersey couple where the wife’s lawyer is arguing that the husband should pay $20,000 towards the wife’s egg freezing and storage […]

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The Fertility Industry Superhighway

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Miriam Zoll, author of the recent book Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies, has a terrific piece out in today’s New York Times on “Selling the Fantasy of Fertility” to those struggling with infertility. She’s co-written the piece with Pamela Tsigdinos, and their voices are important as they write from their […]

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When Leon Kass Speaks, We Should Listen

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One of the perks of what I do is becoming friends with some of the great thinkers of our time, and one of those is Leon Kass. Kass is the reigning intellectual champion for upholding intrinsic human dignity. He also served splendidly for about six years as the chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics […]

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Circumcise to Save Billions in Medical Costs

Declining rates of circumcision could cost society big time when the boy babies become men and risk STDs from engaging in risky activities. From the LA Times story: Declining rates of circumcision among infants will translate into billions of dollars of unnecessary medical costs in the U.S. as these boys grow up and become sexually […]

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Let Science End “Tyranny of the Womb!”

Science gained tremendous regard in the last few hundred years because the knowledge thereby gained allowed us to improve the lot of the human race in ways few would have ever conceived in all of previous human history. But a hubris has crept in — the mad scientist syndrome, if you will — that sees […]

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Bioethics the Spearpoint of Attack on Religious Liberties

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I have noticed that my writing seems to flow in patterns. Much of that is caused by the flow of news, but I think some of it has to do with certain stories getting my attention, after which I connect dots and become acutely conscious of certain ebbs and flows of advocacy. Needless to say, […]

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Thank God Hippocrates Was Pagan

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To suggest that one cannot or should not defend the sanctity of human life in the public square by using publicly accessible secular language is to remove a necessary tool for making the case for valuing and protecting all human life. While religious arguments are good and necessary even in the public square, secular arguments […]

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UC Davis Punishes Professors for Unethical Medical Experiments

Good for UC Davis. It has punished two medical professors for conducting unethical medical experiments on brain cancer patients. From the Associated Press story: Two University of California, Davis, neurosurgeons have been banned from performing medical research on humans after they were accused of experimenting on dying brain cancer patients without university permission, the Sacramento […]

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The Attack of the Raging Secularists

I will be doing an every-other-Friday column for First Things’ “On the Square,” and am most pleased. Today, I illustrate how bioethical issues have become the battle ground for a secularist assault against freedom of religion, by seeking to shrink the core liberty to a straight-jacketed “freedom of worship.” From the piece: Article 18 of […]

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Peter Singer Attacks Religious Liberty

Peter Singer, the crass infanticide and “speciesism” promoter is an atheist. Bully for him, and who cares? But his antipathy toward faith may explain his hostility to, and utter confusion about, religious liberty. Singer has written that Obamacare’s “Free Birth Control Rule” doesn’t violate religious liberty because Catholic hospitals and universities can simply turn over […]

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Human Exceptionalism and Equality Must Be Defended On All Fronts

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Here is my contribution to the Human Exceptionalism Symposium at the Human Life Review. First, I get into why the issue is so fundamental. From, “The Struggle For Human Equality: It Must Be Defended on All Fronts:” Human exceptionalism, as I wrote in the original […]

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