I volunteered to harvest eggs for a friend, whose ovaries had ceased producing eggs in her early 30’s. She bought donated sperm from a California university sperm bank several years prior to my egg harvest and was being counseled about infertility options. This was not an “eggs for money” contract. I volunteered without a compensation [...]
Enewsletter
The Resistance: Sex, Lies and Greed
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director
The history of medicine has long been rooted in the ancient Hippocratic concept primum non nocere — “first, do no harm.” Yet we are living in a time in which the crazy train of advancing techno-medical practice is coming off its Hippocratic rails like never before. Case in point: the [...]
CBC Turns Ten
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director
In 2010, CBC turns ten! We will have some special events and celebrations throughout the year. But to kick us off, I thought I’d highlight my best memories of the past decade. For our full report, Ten Years of Building a Human Future, you can download a pdf here.
Top 10 [...]
Lines That Divide Showing in CA Independent Film Festival
Lines That Divide is showing as an Official Selection at the California Independent Film Festival, Sunday, April 25 at 1:00 PM and 2:45 PM, with discussion following each showing. Purchase tickets
Mediated to Death?
By Matthew Eppinette, CBC New Media Manager
Thomas de Zengotita’s Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It is an exploration of the way in which media, broadly construed (“arts and artifacts that represent, that communicate”), impact the way in which we perceive both the world and ourselves. The [...]
Paul Ramsey Award Dinner Honoring Dr. Leon Kass
Every year we gather to honor the works of the late great Paul Ramsey. Paul Ramsey is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the twentieth century. He was a distinguished writer on bioethics a generation ago, and served as Harrington Spear Pain Professor of Religion, Princeton University. Ramsey shines as an [...]
I’m the Only Daddy You Got! I’m the Paterfamilias!
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director
Newsweek recently reported a story about a 51-year-old man, who between 1980 and 1994 donated his sperm twice a week in order to make cash for medical school and to nurture his altruistic desires to help infertile women. Kirk Maxey states, “I loved having kids, and to have these women [...]
On Human Exceptionalism
By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC. Excerpted from his A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement (Encounter, 2010).
An embrace of human exceptionalism does not depend on religious belief. Whether our distinctive moral characteristics flow from the processes [...]
Pushing a Dangerous Anti-Human Exceptionalism, Undignified Bioethics
By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC
A bioethicist named Alasdair Cochrane, who is, ironically, a deep thinker at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights in the UK, argues against intrinsic human dignity as a basis for establishing bioethical policies. He attacks various theories that promote human dignity, e.g., “as [...]
CBC 2009 Winners and Losers
Winners:
Dr. Darwin J. Prockop, a worldwide leader in adult stem cell research, has moved his research lab from Tulane University to the Texas A&M Health Center which has pledged $40 million over the next 5 years towards his research. Lawmakers in Texas have invested $5 million towards adult stem cell research as have other states [...]
