Last week Public Discourse published the modified text of an address delivered by Archbishop Chaput speaking as a private citizen about the responsibilities of the Catholic voter. It contains a stern rebuke directed at Prof. Doug Kmiec: In his own book [ Can a Catholic Support Him?: Asking the Big . . . . Continue Reading »
Boy, I get accused of being hard on bioethics, but Michael Cook, the creator of Bioedge, has topped me. He blew his top, finally sick and tired of the rush at prestige universities to reward the most radical bioethicists with big dollars (or pounds), the more radical the better.We all know about . . . . Continue Reading »
I recently came across a nice turn of phrase by Jules Renard, a wry French memoir writer from the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth: “Irony does not dry up the grass. It just burns off the weeds.” Yes, I think that’s quite right, but only if the irony . . . . Continue Reading »
This is how the culture of death moves toward cultural hegemony: The first step is to claim that killing (which is descriptive and accurate in that it means “to end life”) will be reserved for the very rare case. But as soon as that premise is accepted, the acceptable category of . . . . Continue Reading »
President Bush’s use of federal funding restrictions to induce creative thinking into ethical ways of deriving pluripotent stem cells continues to be a major triumph, in my opinion, with the astonishing progress that continues to be made in adult stem cell and IPSC research—not that the . . . . Continue Reading »
This is hardly surprising: Hawaii has had to drop its universal health plan for children because people who could afford to insure their children decided instead to let the state assume their responsibility. From the story:Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the . . . . Continue Reading »
I am having trouble keeping up: Every day now almost, it is one once unthinkable thing after another.In the UK, a woman tried to commit suicide by swallowing anti-freeze, and doctors refused to save her! From the story:A young woman who attempted suicide was allowed to die because hospital staff . . . . Continue Reading »
Attending the Human Life Review ‘s Great Defender of Life Dinner last night, I heard some chilling news from pro-life advocates Wesley Smith and Rita Marker. In the coming days, the people of Washington State will be voting on Initiative 1000, the Washington Death with Dignity Act. . . . . Continue Reading »
From today’s Boston Globe : The issue of stem cell research, while not at the forefront of this year’s presidential campaign, has surfaced in political advertisements and again during Wednesday’s presidential debatecasting a potentially revolutionary field of scientific . . . . Continue Reading »
The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide has studied the millions flowing into WA to legalize assisted suicide. Most of the bounty is from out of state euthanasia groups or rich ideologues like former Governor Booth Gardner. From the report: As of 10/10/08, the “Yes on . . . . Continue Reading »