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Posts Tagged ‘ethics’

Losing our virtue

April 17th, 2014 Comments off
Sex is supposedly too trivial to require virtue, yet so significant that restraint is an affront. It can’t be both.

A sentinel watches upon the battlements. The air is raw and cold, and it seems to have penetrated to his knees and ankles and the shoulder upon which he rests his rifle. But he paces his rounds, hour after long hour. He peers into the little glooming light showing in the east. He turns again and faces the west, where the clouds are just beginning to reflect the slightest tinge of purple. Read more…

Categories: ethics, morality, Sexual Integrity Tags: , , ,

Stunning discovery creates ethical stem cells

January 31st, 2014 Comments off
Immersing cells in acid creates pluripotent stem cells? Who could believe that? But it could be the future.

Michael Cook

It’s the ultimate confirmation of the notion that stress is good for you. A team of researchers from Japan and Boston have discovered that subjecting ordinary cells to stress will make them revert to a state in which they can make any cell in the body. It is an astonishingly simple door to the promise of personalised medicine which has obsessed scientists for the last 15 years. Read more…

Categories: ethics, Stem Cell Research Tags: ,

Belgium’s Culture of Death

November 20th, 2013 Comments off

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

If you want to see what happens when a society enthusiastically swallows the euthanasia poison, look at Belgium. Perhaps influenced by its neighbor the Netherlands — which pioneered euthanasia permissiveness — Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002. The country has since leaped head-first off a vertical moral cliff. Read more…

Categories: Assisted Suicide, ethics, Euthanasia Tags: , ,

Putting doctors above the law

November 13th, 2013 Comments off

Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill, which aims to legalise assisted suicide for mentally competent adults with less than six months to live and a ‘clear and settled intention to end their lives’, had its first reading in the House of Lords last May. It is due to return for a second reading (debate stage) in Spring 2014.

In an interview for Pulse magazine recently, Lord Falconer was asked if GPs were likely to get into trouble with the police for authorising assisted suicide under his proposed bill should it ever become law. His answer was quite revealing. Read more…

Categories: Abortion, Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia Tags: , , ,

Euthanizing the Unhappy: The Urgent Need for Love

November 9th, 2013 Comments off

by Jennifer Roback Morse

November 7th, 2013 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/11/11113/

The case of a Belgian woman who committed physician-assisted suicide after a sex-change operation reveals that we must not only look more closely at the causes of gender dysphoria, we must also offer all people the love that they so deeply need. Read more…

Categories: Assisted Suicide, ethics, Euthanasia, Jennifer Roback Morse, Newsletter articles Tags: , ,

Should ER Docs Not Save All Suicide Patients?

November 7th, 2013 Comments off

by Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

This is what we are becoming. Five years ago in the UK, Kerry Wooltorton swallowed anti-freeze, called an ambulance, and then pinned a note to her shirt saying not to save her life. Accordingly, doctors let her die slowly over 24 hours — a decision later validated by the coroner’s inquest. Read more…

Categories: Assisted Suicide, ethics Tags: ,

Putting a price on human organs

November 1st, 2013 Comments off
Is paying kidney donors consistent with human dignity?

Canadian broadcasting reports that University of Calgary researchers suggest paying kidney donors could be “less costly, more effective” and payments could boost donations. Is this a good idea and if not, why? Read more…

Categories: ethics Tags:

The dubious ethics of creating children with three genetic parents

July 25th, 2013 Comments off

by Margaret Somerville

Violating an international consensus, the British government has authorized scientists to tinker with the human genome.

The United Kingdom Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has been in the news for giving the go-ahead to creating three-genetic-parent human embryos. Read more…

Categories: Babies, ethics Tags: ,

Why the UK should reject three-parent embryos

July 3rd, 2013 Comments off
British stem cell scientists have scored a big win by securing government approval for a scheme to avoid rare diseases. This will do far more harm than good.

The media was buzzing last week with the news that Britain is planning to become the first country in the world to offer controversial “three-parent” fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on mitochondrial diseases to their children. Read more…

Categories: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Babies, ethics, Invitro Fertilization Tags: , , , ,

Not with a bang, but a whimper

June 4th, 2013 Comments off

by Michael Cook

After more than a decade of research on embryonic stem cells, scientists are quietly moving on to greener pastures.

Let’s wind the clock back to 2003. In January wheelchair-bound quadriplegic actor Christopher Reeve visited Australia to promote the legalisation of “therapeutic cloning”. This was absolutely necessary, he said, or patients would die needlessly. Scepticism about the potential of embryonic stem cells was utterly unwarranted. “That’s a myth,” he told his Australian audience. “That’s not true. Don’t let anyone tell you it is a pipedream.” Read more…

Categories: ethics, Stem Cell Research Tags: , ,