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Posts Tagged ‘ethics’

Baby Joseph battles

March 5th, 2011 21 comments

Some further info on this situation. The baby is aptly named since St. Joseph is the patron saint of the dying. He’ll be in good hands when the time comes. With the help of our prayers, too, of course.

by Sheila Liaugminas

The hospital involved in this sad story is representing itself as allowing the family’s wishes to take their child home to die there instead of in the stark atmosphere of the medical facility. And some news stories have reported that the parents are getting their wish, after all. Not exactly true… Read more…

Is “Yuck!” a good enough reason?

March 5th, 2011 55 comments

by Zac Alstin

Do taboos on incest and infanticide have a rational basis?

The father of modern astronomy, Galileo, did not win converts to his theories through their obvious truthfulness. Rather, the younger generation of astronomers were drawn to the new and exciting research possibilities that came with Galileo’s telescopes. Older, more established astronomers doubted that the new technology could be trusted. We moderns take for granted that what we see through the end of a telescope is real. Yet some of Galileo’s contemporaries refused to even look through one of his telescopes for themselves. Read more…

Categories: ethics, Sex Radicals Tags: ,

So Now It’s Going To Be Collusive Litigation By Obama, Is It?

March 3rd, 2011 4 comments

From the FRC article:

As the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), an organization that has filed amicus briefs defending both Proposition 8 and DoMA, I am troubled by the lightning-fast integration of concepts and actual language from the Attorney General Letter into the Motion to Vacate Stay. Let me repeat: the Motion was filed within two-and-one-half hours of Attorney General’s press conference. Consequently, I am deeply concerned that officials at the Department of Justice were collaborating with the litigants in the Proposition 8 case. Even the appearance of collusion between the Department of Justice and litigants is highly damaging to the rule of law in America.

So Planned ‘Parenthood’ Clinics Are Not the Only Abortion Mills With Absolutely No Moral or Ethical Scruples…

March 1st, 2011 14 comments

Abortion Centers in Texas Evade Laws, Dump Records and Waste:
The evidence we uncovered of illegal activity reveals a systemic problem throughout Texas that is not confined to one particular clinic or group of clinics… These violations endanger the heath of women, violate the rights of women to be informed and have their medical records protected, and present health hazards to the general public.

WHY are we still allowing our taxes to be used to fund this monstrous industry???

Donor-Conceived Persons Demand Their Biological Origins

February 27th, 2011 11 comments

Yet more evidence that Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donation is Over (and not soon enough, if you ask me).

newsweek.com:
Currently, in the United States, you need a license to sell a condo or cut hair in a salon, but not to broker human life. The $3 billion fertility industry goes largely unregulated, offering blank pages to those searching for information where the rest of us are free to access vital statistics of public record. “I’m not a treatment, I’m a person, and those records belong to me,” says Pratten.

On top of the serious risk of inbreeding and the medical and health concerns associated with anonymous sperm and egg donation, we all should be entitled to know our biological heritage for the sake of the effect it has on our self image and identity: Read more…

The tangled web of surrogacy

February 23rd, 2011 10 comments

by Margaret Somerville

Should a grandmother agree to bear her daughter’s son? Is the child her son or her grandson?

 Sara Connell, left, holds her new baby Finnean Lee Connell, on Thursday at Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago. Sara’s mother, Kristine Casey, 61, served as a surrogate for her daughter. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune / February 11, 2011)Sara Connell, left, holds her new baby Finnean Lee Connell, on Thursday at Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago. Sara’s mother, Kristine Casey, 61, served as a surrogate for her daughter. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune / February 11, 2011) Read more…

Now Planned ‘Parenthood’ Is Doing Internet Abortions

February 22nd, 2011 22 comments

From LifeSiteNews.com

Former Planned Parenthood director turned pro-lifer Abby Johnson tells CBN News that Planned Parenthood usually makes a $300 to $400 profit off each abortion using the abortion pill, which includes telemed abortions.

It also cuts its costs with telemed abortions because it can pay a discounted rate to doctors who are not physically present meeting the patient.

What a ‘quality’ health care provider Planned ‘Parenthood’ is.

Why should they receive so much as one more penny of tax-payer’s money? Why did we ever allow them to gorge themselves on public largess?

Ethically Thin, Science Unltd.: The Shape of Progressive Bioethics

November 18th, 2010 Comments off

By Evan Rosa, CBC Communications Director

Reviewed: Progress in Bioethics: Science, Policy, and Politics (Basic Bioethics), Jonathan D. Moreno and Sam Berger, eds., The MIT Press, 2010

“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.” (G.K. Chesterton, Fancies Versus Fads) Read more…

Categories: ethics, Newsletter articles Tags:

Religion, Journalism, and the New American Orthodoxy

September 29th, 2010 Comments off

by Charles J. Chaput

September 24, 2010
In an address delivered today before the Religion Newswriters Association, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver commended America’s journalists of religion and challenged them to approach their important work with integrity, fairness, and humility. Read more…
Categories: ethics, Religion Tags: ,

Montana allows assisted suicide

January 8th, 2010 Comments off

I’m shocked, and saddened. I expected more from Montana.

Michael Cook, BioEdge.com

The state of Montana has become the third US jurisdiction to allow doctors to participate in assisted suicide. In a 4-3 decision, its Supreme Court held that state law protects doctors from prosecution for helping terminally ill patients die. Read more…

Americans using surrogacy to create made-to-order babies

December 29th, 2009 Comments off

betsey-copyFrom this article we learn that there are even more problems with invitro fertilization and surrogacy than are common knowledge. Problems arise when playing God? Shocker!

 

Jared Yee, BioEdge.org

Different regulatory approaches to surrogacy in the US can result in legal tangles, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. The “lax atmosphere” of surrogacy regulation “means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions.”

The Times gives three disturbing examples.

Continue reading: http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8791/

Terminating Korea’s abortion culture

December 18th, 2009 Comments off

Way to go, Dr. Sang-duk Shim and the doctors who have joined you to fight abortion in Korea. Way to be courageous despite opposition on many fronts.

From Mercatornet.com

A Korean gynaecologist explains why he abandoned a lucrative procedure and is campaigning to reduce abortions.

South Korea has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world, even though abortion is technically illegal there except in a few rare circumstances. According to official government figures, there are 340,000 abortions each year, although one parliamentarian has estimated that there may be as many as 1.5 million. At the same time, Korea’s birth rate is the second-lowest in the world – 1.19 births per woman — and some Koreans fear that their very survival as a nation is in doubt.

That is the background for a courageous decision by a 50-year-old Seoul obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Sang-duk Shim, to stop doing abortions and to lobby the government for a dramatic reduction. He has even received death threats for his stand. MercatorNet conducted this email interview with him: Read more…

Three-parent babies possible, say Japanese researchers

November 28th, 2009 Comments off

Jared Yee, BioEdge.org

The successful fertilisation of an egg using biological material from two women may have moved the world closer to three-parent babies. Researchers at St Mother Hospital in Kitakyushu, Japan, have experimented with repairing the damaged eggs of older women by using eggs from younger donors. The usefulness of this process is disputed. Some doctors say it could improve chances of fertilisation and prevent genetic defects; others worry that the DNA of three people might lead to genetic problems. Read more…

Pre-natal diagnostic techniques pave the way to eugenics

November 24th, 2009 Comments off

Manuel and Sophia Corpas, Mercatornet.com

Ever-more sophisticated technology allows us to detect ever more genetic anomalies. What will we do with this knowledge?

One of our biggest worries in the field of genome medicine is the use of prenatal genetics tests to justify the abortion of human embryos. Current technologies allow enhanced detection of genetic abnormalities that a few years ago would have been unthinkable. Read more…

UK doctors fibbing about Down syndrome, says expert

November 24th, 2009 Comments off

Michael Cook, BioEdge.org

Studies have shown that 92% of Down Syndrome babies are aborted in the UK each year, much the same as in the US and Australia. However government statistics show that the number of babies aborted because of Down syndrome was only 436 in 2008 and 2,168 between 2004 and 2008. There seems to be a mismatch. Read more…

Would euthanasia damage doctors?

November 24th, 2009 Comments off

Margaret Somerville, Mercatornet.com

Legalising euthanasia will have incalculable consequences for healthcare professionals.

Last week, the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons tentatively approved euthanasia. That means it’s essential that we look, specifically, at the impact that euthanasia would have on physicians and the profession of medicine, in order to understand why this approval is a very bad idea. Read more…

Make life the only choice

November 11th, 2009 Comments off

, National Post

They don’t call it the scary-sounding “Hemlock Society” any more. The new name is “Compassion and Choices.” Under this cuddly rubric, bespoke death is now endorsed by respected society matrons and politicians as euthanasia’s version of Planned Parenthood. The once-reviled euthanasia obsessional — and criminal — Dr. Kevorkian, is raking in $50,000 a pop on the lecture circuit. The cultural wind is in euthanasia’s sails and the most unlikely people are heeding its siren call. Read more…

Korean stem cell fraud given suspended sentence

October 31st, 2009 Comments off

Michael Cook, BioEdge

Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk has escaped jail after being convicted of violating bioethics laws to obtain human eggs and of embezzling US$700,000 in government grants. Hwang became a national hero after he published articles in the journal Science in 2004 claiming that he had successfully cloned human embryos and developed stem cell lines. He was named “Supreme Scientist”; his feat was commemorated on a postage stamp; and the government even considered nominating him for a Nobel prize. However, in 2005 most of his work in human embryonic stem cells was exposed as a fraud. Further investigation showed that he had misused funds and pressured a female researcher into donating eggs for his experiments. Read more…

Lid kept on UK Down syndrome kids with prenatal testing

October 31st, 2009 Comments off

Michael Cook, BioEdge

A study in the BMJ has confirmed that more effective prenatal screening has contained the growth in the number of Down syndrome children in Britain. Even though the number of births in 1989/90 was roughly the same as 2007/08, antenatal and postnatal diagnoses of Down’s syndrome increased by 71% to 1,843. The number of live births with Down syndrome, however, actually fell by 1% because more women had antenatal screening and subsequently terminated the child. Read more…

Israeli Knesset extends moratorium on human cloning

October 31st, 2009 Comments off

Michael Cook, BioEdge

The Israeli Knesset has once again declined to ban human reproductive cloning. Instead it has extended a moratorium on it for another seven years. Scientists had apparently persuaded them that a permanent ban would make some researchers would abandon their cloning research. They seem to have won the day, as the government had only proposed a five-year moratorium. Read more…

Categories: ethics Tags: ,