Earlier I posted a note about our junior fellow Stefan McDaniel’s essay on friendship in the magazine Dappled Things . As I was reading the new issue yesterday, I came across an artful poem by Roger Mitchell that employs the metaphor of barrel-making to describe marriage: Holy Matrimony . . . . Continue Reading »
A small group of U.S. evangelists have had their Bibles confiscated at an airport in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunmingand they’re not leaving without them. Chinese officials say it’s illegal to bring into the country printed religious material beyond that required for . . . . Continue Reading »
A notice in the New York Times on Saturday: Correction: August 16, 2008. An article on Friday about the planned construction of two large solar power installations in California described incorrectly the operation of the solar panels in one, to be built by SunPower. Its panels pivot from east to . . . . Continue Reading »
America’s best hope for a medal in boxing, Demetrius Andrade, the reigning welterweight world champ was upset in a quaterfinal bout on Sunday . After the fight Andrade exhibited astonishingly poor sportsmanship by leaving the ring before the referee announced the official decision. So it was . . . . Continue Reading »
Oh, oh. A-list movie star Gwyneth Paltrow has endorsed a clothing company that uses animal skin in some of its products, and predictably, the animal rights ideologues are coming unglued. From the story: The Hollywood star has been signed up by Italian designer Tod’s and is pictured draped in . . . . Continue Reading »
Usually my wife Debra J. Saunders—better known as Secondhand Smokette—and I plow different fields in our writing. But once in a while, our interests converge, as in a few weeks ago when she wrote a splendid column about animal rights violence directed against researchers in Santa Cruz, . . . . Continue Reading »
This bit from Monty Python’s THE MEANING OF LIFE, PART 1, is terribly gross and over the top, but it has the germ of a point and came to mind in our discussion of the growing advocacy within bioethics and organ transplant medicine to do away with the dead donor rule and allow living patients . . . . Continue Reading »
So just when you thought the right was left behind when it came to big-budget Hollywood satire, along comes David Zucker of Airplane! and Naked Gun fame to poke a little fun at none other than multimillionaire mockumentarian Michael Moore. It’s called An American Carol and stars Kelsey . . . . Continue Reading »
This is Part 2 of my deconstruction of an article in the NEJM proposing to end the dead donor rule in organ transplantation. Hit this link to read Part 1:In the end, since the authors of “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation” apparently believe we can’t really get many . . . . Continue Reading »
I have now read “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation” in the NEJM (359:7, August 14, 2008), by Robert D. Troug, MD, a physician at Harvard Medical School, and Franklin D. Miller, a bioethicist at the NIH. It makes for frightening reading. My comments will of necessity be long, . . . . Continue Reading »