by Michael Cook
Euthanasia claimed its most famous victim last Saturday. At the age of 95, Belgian Nobel laureate Christian de Duve was killed with a lethal injection. He died in his home, surrounded by his four children. Read more…
by Michael Cook
Robert Edwards, the inventor of IVF, died two days after Margaret Thatcher. History may show that his impact was even greater than hers.
The creator of the first IVF baby, 2010 Nobel Laureate Robert Edwards, died last week. Obituaries and eulogies by colleagues, friends and admirers spoke of a passionate man with boundless energy, driven by a desire to bring happiness to infertile couples. Since he is directly responsible for the birth of some five million children since the first IVF baby in 1978, his legacy is worth pondering. Read more…
The subtitle of Mary Shelley’s famous novel “Frankenstein,” was “The Modern Prometheus.” The reference is to the Greek legend about the tragic consequences of endowing humanity with god-like power. Shelley’s Frankenstein is about a scientist operating without regard for moral and ethical constraints. Read more…
by Hilary White
LONDON, March 27, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A technique to implant donor DNA from a third party into in vitro embryos has been approved by the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). The technique is a form of “germline” alteration that involves modification of the person’s mitochondrial DNA (MDNA) to create genetic changes that will be carried on throughout subsequent generations. Read more…
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President
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 from reason are equally as important for effectively engaging in the marketplace of ideas in a pluralistic society. If we deny secular reasoning, then we deny thousands of years of the rich Hippocratic tradition in medicine. For in fact Hippocrates and his colleagues were pagan. Dust off the oath and read it. Read more…
Let’s focus on Wisconsin here, as a microcosm of the morphing healthcare system that’s redefining health and care and prompting an effort to examine it all carefully.
The Wisconsin bishops released a statement warning people about the spreading use of Physician (or Provider) Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST). They did it in a carefully but clearly worded pastoral letter Upholding the Dignity of Human Life. Read more…
January 31, 2012 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.
From its ancient Stoic origins to its modern Kantian formulations, human dignity is an important concept for sound ethical thinking. Doing so requires that we distinguish dignity as attributed, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as flourishing. Read more…
The Catholic Bishops of Maryland have issued a statement, “The Most Sacred of All Property: Religious Freedom and the People of Maryland.”
Despite its title, the principles it lays out and the examples it uses are applicable to the entire United States. People of all faiths, not just Catholics, will find it a helpful defense when faced with marriage and family issues.
Read it here.
This used to be called prostitution–now it’s just debt reduction:
…There is a plethora of on-line dating sites, calling themselves arrangement sites, where young women looking to pay down college debt are matched to older, wealthy donors. What is not advertised, but is clearly understood by reading young women’s confessionals in a recent Huffington Post piece about “sugar daddies” and the financially beleaguered “sugar baby” girls, is that these arrangements are for paid sex, and the industry is booming. Read more…
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