Viagra and birth control serve two very different purposes, and each one has its own unique ethical considerations. Viagra, at a minimum, treats an actual dysfunction, while birth control does not. In fact, one might say that Viagra fixes a broken system, while birth control breaks a perfectly working system.
Read More...it would be false to conclude that an addict can't make choices. The only reason there is any hope left for an addict is because he still has a small space of freedom that he can act on, allowing him to decide whether or not to begin a new journey. He can choose to take the first step along the road leading away from addiction towards rehabilitation.
Read More…only the most cursory ethical reflection is needed to grasp the moral problem with creating human offspring in laboratories, using an admixture of cow components, in order to scientifically cannibalize them.
Read More…embryos are unfamiliar to us, so that we may react differently to them than we would to a fully formed baby. But it should also serve to remind us how embryos are not supposed to be familiar to us, and are not supposed to be in freezers in the first place, but only within the safe harbor of their mother’s womb.
Read MoreThe temptation to reduce feminine beauty to a kind of plastic and exterior measure is surely a failure to realize how a woman's physical beauty is meant to be but a gentle hint, a pointer towards an abiding beauty within.
Read More…the precise timing of ensoulment/personhood of the human embryo is irrelevant to the question of whether we may ever destroy such embryos for research or other purposes.
Read MoreCodes of medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, and the Declaration of Helsinki came into existence after various misguided ideologies gained a foothold, or after the medical establishment suffered a core meltdown, allowing doctors and researchers to participate in crimes against humanity.
Read MoreOur duty is to provide loving care and strong support to those whose “quality of life” may be less than perfect, including those who are sick or those who may be disabled like Terri Schiavo, rather than targeting them for an early demise through the withholding of food and water.
Read MoreReprogramming provides patient-specific stem cells… but without using women’s eggs, without killing embryos, and without crossing moral lines.
Read MoreWhen a woman arrives to an emergency room following a sexual assault, a simple urine test for leutinizing hormone (LH) can be used to gain information about whether she is ovulating.
Read MoreHuman cloning, in the final analysis, is ... a technique for making an identical twin of someone. While all of us have met various sets of identical twins over the years, none of us has ever met a pair where one of the twins lacked a soul. By similar reasoning, it is clear that the idea of a ‘soulless clone’ is little more than an urban legend.
Read MoreThe truly compassionate doctor will humbly recognize that even his most powerful tools and treatments will not be able to stave off death in every case. At certain times, he will have to step aside as the shadow of death draws near and the mortal existence of the person he has been caring for comes to its natural close.
Read MoreThere is a certain banality about evil. It doesn't necessarily present itself in a monstrous or dramatic way. It can take the shape of simple conformity to what everyone else is doing, to what the leadership says is right, to what the neighbors are doing...
Read More... marital sexuality is all about loving someone totally and unreservedly, giving and receiving totally, and not holding back who we are for ourselves. It involves a unique language of total self-giving.
Read MoreAs I watched him, the rhetorical thought flashed through my mind, patterned on the language of embryonic stem cell advocates: ‘…he’s so small, so insignificant: what if a cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes could be developed to benefit all of suffering mankind, by promoting scientific research that depended on killing just a single little boy like him.
Read MoreThe key flaw in Dr. Sandel’s argument is the claim that acorns are potential oaks, when in fact, they are not potential oaks, but actual oaks (at an early stage).
Read More…women (and men) should never be paid for their eggs (or sperm), as we insist they not be paid for organ donations. This is done to prevent the human body from becoming “commodified” by powerful economic and market forces, and to stave off the prospect of trafficking in human parts.
Read MoreThe inner structure of human sexuality thus includes this central and discernible meaning: that the root origin of new human life is meant to ultimately lie beyond our own direct determination...
Read MoreBetter than a living will, or at least together with it, we should always choose a surrogate, a living person, who will make health care decisions in real time on our behalf if we are rendered unable to do so.
Read MoreIn tragic situations like sexual assault, it can be enormously difficult to perceive the right lines, and to think with reason rather than emotions.
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