February 2010

Thinking About Donating Your Eggs? Think Again

Egg donation is risky business. But unlike other high-risk jobs that offer appropriate compensation for the dangers (e.g., skyscraper window washing), the egg donation process is inherently risky, from beginning to end. What are those risks? Stroke, organ failure, infection, cancer, loss of future fertility, and in rare instances, even death. Sadly, longer-term risks remain [...]

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Thinking About Donating Your Eggs? Think Again

Egg donation is risky business. But unlike other high-risk jobs that offer appropriate compensation for the dangers (e.g., skyscraper window washing), the egg donation process is inherently risky, from beginning to end. What are those risks? Stroke, organ failure, infection, cancer, loss of future fertility, and in rare instances, even death. Sadly, longer-term risks remain [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Thoughtful NEJM Commentary: “Is It Always Wrong to Perform Futile CPR?”

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The ethical struggle over medical futility can be intense, but I think both sides have the best interests of patients and society at heart. A very thoughtful commentary in the NEJM by Robert D. Truog–who, I have disagreed with in the past when he advocated [...]

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Baby Isaiah: Refusing to be a “Selector” of Who Has the Right to Live

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I have written before of the futile care case in Canada involving “Baby Isaiah,” an infant who experienced a severe brain injury during a very long labor process. When the physicians sent a letter stating they would unilaterally cease life support, Isaiah’s parents sued. These [...]

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What It Means to be Human: Knocking Us Off the Pedestal

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I am in LA, near my old stomping grounds in the San Fernando Valley, where I just gave grand rounds at a Veteran’s medical facility to physicians, residents, and other medical staffers. We had a very good discussion about maintaining human intrinsic dignity as the [...]

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Geron Politicized Its Stem Cell Human Trial Request

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC So much for caring exclusively about alleviating the suffering of ill and disabled people. Geron’s head has admitted playing politics with the timing of its request to conduct the world’s first human embryonic stem cell trials on its ESC-based product to be tried on people [...]

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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 [...]

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Euthanasia Created Dutch Culture of Death: Elderly “Tired of Life” Next Category for Termination

Euthanasia Created Dutch Culture of Death: Elderly “Tired of Life” Next Category for Termination By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The Netherlands vividly illustrates how euthanasia/assisted suicide cannot logically be limited to the restricted category of people diagnosed with a terminal illness. Since euthanasia began there under official sanction–first decriminalization and [...]

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