January 2007

The Inconvenient Truth of Eggsploitation

Today in the Korea Times, “Egg Donation to be Banned” The government is expected to ban human egg donations late this year, a move apparently motivated by the scandal involving the country’s disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Here is my take on all this: It’s human nature to want to explain away truths we’d rather [...]

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The Weak Among Us

Richard Weikart has provided bioethicists with an excellent resource in From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). He summarizes the writings ofmany prominent German scientists, philosophers, and popularizers whowrote during the period between Darwin and Hitler. His bookdemonstrates a thorough understanding of the primary sources andclearly presents [...]

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An Ethically Unsound “Therapy”

(from nationalreview.com) Doctorsat Seattle Children’s Hospital admitted that they surgically removed asix-year-old girl’s healthy uterus, breast buds, and appendix, and thensubjected her to two years of high-dose estrogen injections to keep herfrom reaching adult stature. And they did so at her parents’ request.Sounds like a clear case of child abuse, doesn’t it? Not sofast. Many [...]

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Children of Men – A Film Review

I had planned to run this review last week, but held off in order to comment on the recent news on the discovery of amniotic fluid stem cells that “hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.” And we were even tempted today to postpone the review again so as to provide commentary on [...]

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Tiniest Katrina survivor finally born

This is pretty exciting news: Sixteen months after being rescued as a frozen embryo from a hospital flooded by Hurricane Katrina, Noah Benton Markham entered the world Tuesday morning and was greeted by his cheering family. The 8 pound, 61/2-ounce boy was born by Caesarean section at 7:23 a.m. CT (6:23 a.m. ET) at St. [...]

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Stop Making Sense

I woke up early Sunday morning to a barrage of news headlines. Newsweek: “Stem cells derived from amniotic fluid show great promise in the lab and may end the divisive ethical debate once and for all” The Washington Post: “Stem Cells Discovered in Amniotic Fluid” Los Angeles Times: “Stem Cells In Amniotic Fluid Show Great [...]

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Stop Making Sense

I woke up early Sunday morning to a barrage of news headlines. Newsweek: “Stem cells derived from amniotic fluid show great promise in the lab and may end the divisive ethical debate once and for all” The Washington Post: “Stem Cells Discovered in Amniotic Fluid” Los Angeles Times: “Stem Cells In Amniotic Fluid Show Great [...]

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New Life Helps Life

Sunday, Paul Elias with Associated Press published this that I caught at WashingtonPost.com. Apparently researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University have found that amniotic fluid is a rich source of stem cells that “hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.” You’d think that this would be the best news since sliced [...]

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Wesley Smith on 2007 Predictions

Vote on our poll at the bottom! When social critic Jeremy Rifkin predicted the coming of the “biotech century” in 1998, few understood just how right he was. Consider how far biotechnology has traveled since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep and how these discoveries have impacted the ethics of society: Human cloning is [...]

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My Predictions for 2007

When social critic Jeremy Rifkin predicted the coming of the “biotech century” in 1998, few understood just how right he was. Consider how far biotechnology has traveled since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep and how these discoveries have impacted the ethics of society: Human cloning is being pursued aggressively, animals are being genetically [...]

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