I have become so good at predicting the future in bioethics, I sometimes scare myself. I was very prescient in 2011, and nearly perfect in 2012. (I wish I had the same talent when it comes to the stock market.) And now, the fog is lifting, the coming year in bioethics coming into focus. Oh! I see agitation. I see litigation. I Read More ›
“In Defense of Irreligious Bioethics” (Murphy 2012) was one of the most perplexing articles I have ever read in a bioethics journal. Mostly, the author complains bitterly about the unjust and unpredictable manner in which the nonexistent deity answers or ignores prayer. Indeed, the article struck me as the written equivalent of a man standing on a box in Hyde Read More ›
When I was a child, I was terrified of polio. Even more, I feared the disease’s vivid icon: the iron lung. I still remember my horror at the thought of being encased in metal looking at the world through an angled mirror installed above my head. I was an early recipient of the vaccine, and stopped fearing polio while still Read More ›
“In Defense of Irreligious Bioethics” (Murphy 2012) was one of the most perplexing articles I have ever read in a bioethics journal. Mostly, the author complains bitterly about the unjust and unpredictable manner in which the nonexistent deity answers or ignores prayer. Indeed, the article struck me as the written equivalent of a man standing on a box in Hyde Read More ›
When I was practicing law from the mid-1970s into the 1980s, there was tremendous emphasis given in the popular media and within the bar association to the cause of suicide prevention. Hotlines proliferated, anti-suicide billboards were ubiquitous, and a great deal of attention was paid to saving the lives of despairing people. Attitudes have shifted since then. Not only does Read More ›
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could soon be facing a David Stockman moment. Mr. Stockman was President Reagan’s young, first-term budget director assigned the titanic task of retrenching government spending in the midst of the Cold War. In this role, he made the covers of all the most fashionable magazines as “Mack the Knife” or some other compassionless conservative slashing Read More ›
Never in human history has suffering been more readily relieved than today. And yet, paradoxically, we have never been more afraid of suffering. Our forebears would find this very odd. For them, horrendous suffering was ubiquitous, the bane of rich and poor alike. For example, before anesthesia, the agony of surgery may have killed more patients than surgical procedures helped. Read More ›
This article, published by the Associated Press, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Juries are often sympathetic to those who kill a spouse out of what is portrayed to be love and compassion, but the message that sends is unclear, said Wesley J. Smith, a California lawyer who wrote a 2006 book “Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and Read More ›
If you want to see what direction health care is going, just read the July 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Of course, reading a medical journal isn’t on most people’s “to do” lists. Even medical professionals who do read journal articles rarely do so to gain insight into the latest shifts in the cultural or Read More ›
Until very recently, the West saw religious liberty as a weight-bearing pillar of human freedom. Thus, the very first clause of the First Amendment (1789) states, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof More broadly, Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) provides: Everyone has the Read More ›