My article in Today’s Headline Bistro. In the treacherous cross-currents of gender politics, scientific investigation, and pharmaceutics, far too many human beings have succumbed to the roiling and unforgiving forces that are driven by ideology and greed. Countless millions have paid with their health, and many with their lives. A new tributary has opened recently [...]
Archive for the ‘Biomedical Ethics’ Category
Developing A Male Contraceptive Pill: Orgasm at Any Cost?
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged Columbia University, Male Contraceptive, Vitamin A on June 22, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Genetically Engineering Cows to Give Human Breast Milk
Posted in Biomedical Ethics on June 21, 2011 | 1 Comment »
News last week that rival teams in China and Argentina are claiming that each was the first to develop a herd of genetically modified cows that produce human breast milk. Get the stories here and here. From the first story: The director of the research project, Professor Li Ning, said Western concerns about the ethics [...]
Sic Transit Jack Kevorkian
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Physician Assisted Suicide, tagged Death With Dignity, Dr. Jack Kevorkian on June 3, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Today, at age 83, Dr. Jack Kevorkian slipped into eternity and left in his wake a trail of civilizational wreckage from which we may never recover. With his Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) movement, he was one of the Twentieth Century’s architects of the Culture of Death; the Margaret Sanger of the opposite end of the [...]
Pepsi, Aborted Babies, Ethics, and Tasteful Research
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Uncategorized, tagged HEK 293, PepsiCo on June 1, 2011 | 11 Comments »
There is a growing chorus from within the pro-life movement against PepsiCo for their use of a cell line (derived from a baby aborted in the 1970′s) for testing response to new flavors in the lab. This is biologically straightforward, and ethically problematic. From a consumerist and moral perspective, it’s even murkier. Pepsi is just [...]
The Myth and Manipulation of “Brain Death” (Part I)
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged Brain Death, Terri Schiavo on May 13, 2011 | 10 Comments »
The research for my Master of Science degree involved obtaining rat spinal cords immediately after having decapitated the live rat with a guillotine (One reason for pursuing microbiology for the Ph.D.). The first time I ever decapitated a rat, I was stunned at what I beheld as I cut away the spine and looked into [...]
A Case for Embryo Adoption?
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Personhood, tagged Dignitas Personae, Embryo Adoption on April 14, 2011 | 52 Comments »
The issue of embryo adoption, having leftover embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen thawed and implanted in an adoptive mother’s womb, is a thorny subject in Catholic moral theology and ethics circles. I’ve wrestled with this idea for years, and I think we need to continue attending to it in a serious and substantive way. In [...]
Updating the Stem Cell Wars (Part I)
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Stem Cell Therapy, tagged Adult Stem Cells, Dr. George Daley, Embryonic Stem Cells, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, iPS Cells, Reuters on April 11, 2011 | 7 Comments »
My article in today’s Headline Bistro. As soon as scientists begin discussing the differences between embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and altered nuclear transfer, most non-scientists become overwhelmed by the technicalities and quickly lose their moorings in the ethical and funding debates. This is needless and easily cleared up with [...]
When Hospitals Become Gulags
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged Baby Joseph, Canada, Euthanasia on February 23, 2011 | 2 Comments »
If any human being understood state-sponsored violence and its effects on the human soul, it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Consider these two quotes in light of new developments today in the case of Baby Joseph in Canada: “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man [...]
Lila Rose: The Last Word
Posted in Abortion, Biomedical Ethics, tagged Detraction, Lie, Lila Rose, Live Action on February 20, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Well, it’s been quite an interesting week. Response to the posts here at Coming Home have ranged from polite discourse to me being a heretic, promoting heresy, covering and promoting mortal sin, the sinking of the Bismarck and the Titanic, and the explosion of the Challenger. Those caught up in this have been unrepentant heretics [...]
The Lila Enigma: Selective Outrage?
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged Ethics, Lie, Lila Rose, Live Action, Planned Parenthood on February 19, 2011 | 25 Comments »
It’s been an interesting week in the Catholic blogosphere, to say the least. The most damning evidence about Planned Parenthood has emerged in their 95 year history of eugenic genocide, complete with the evidence that they: *May well have tainted the Virginia blood supply. *Do not use the $350 million per year in federal funding [...]
Lila: Is it moral to lie?
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, tagged Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC, Ethics, Lie, Lila Rose, Morality on February 17, 2011 | 61 Comments »
In the midst of Lila Rose’s greatest triumph, one that has dealt a deep and potentially mortal wound to Planned Parenthood, Catholic theologians and philosophers have raised the issue of whether Lila’s techniques are moral. The question is, “Did she lie?” The articles written have ranged from thoughtful, deliberative pieces to hatchet jobs. I’m not [...]
New Late-Term Abortion Method: Lethal Injection, Then Send to Regular OB/GYN for Delivery
Posted in Abortion, Biomedical Ethics, tagged Abortion, Insurance Fraud, Late Term Abortion, Lethal injection on January 31, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Jill Stanek reports a stunner on her blog today: Revelations about the dangerous and dastardly practices of late-term abortionists, particularly on the East Coast (Brigham, Carhart, Gosnell), continue. Today Operation Rescue exposed yet another new way they are circumventing the system – this time only by killing babies by lethal injection and nothing more. This [...]
2010 Winner of Coming Home’s Golden Coconut Award: Sister Carol Keehan
Posted in Abortion, Biomedical Ethics, Golden Coconut Award, tagged Abrtion, Bishop Olmsted, Golden Coconut, Health Care, National Catholic Reporter, Obamacare, Phoenix, Sister Carol Keehan, Sister McBride, St. Joseph's Hospital on January 2, 2011 | 9 Comments »
In November, Coming Home began a monthly award, the Golden Coconut, an award for the coconut pro-abortion apologists who spout the most anti-scientific nonsense in the headlong pursuit of butchering babies. There has been one individual within the Catholic Church who is deserving of the December AND the Year-End Award, and that is Sister Carol [...]
Euthanasia: The People of the Lie
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Euthanasia on December 30, 2010 | 12 Comments »
Want to kill your mother? Here is how one New York HMO tried to do it with my friend’s mom. Names have been changed to protect their privacy. This is malevolence as art. Clinical Background Mike’s mom, Betty, is 90 years old. In the past seven years she has had cancer and triple by-pass surgery. [...]
Catholic Bishop Right to Push Back Against Culture of Death
Posted in Abortion, Biomedical Ethics, Bishops, tagged Abortion, Bishop Thomas Olmsted, ERD's, LifeNews.com, Saint Joseph's Hospital, Sister Margaret McBride on December 28, 2010 | 32 Comments »
My article in today’s LifeNews.com Bishop Thomas Olmsted, of the Phoenix, Arizona Diocese took the extraordinary step last week of removing Saint Joseph Hospital’s Catholic status. The measure comes after last May’s confrontation between Sister Margaret McBride, the hospital’s administrator who gave permission for an 11-week pregnant woman with a severe case of pulmonary hypertension [...]
