LifeEthics
Bioethics
>California rejects parental notification for minors’ abortions
>California voters have voted against a State Constitutional amendment to require doctors to notify parents when minor girls obtain an abortion. From the San Francisco Gate: Proposition 4 would alter the state constitution to prohibit a minor from obtaining an abortion until 48 hours after her doctor notified her parent, legal guardian or, in certain … Continue reading
>Washington State passes assisted suicide law
>Washington has joined Oregon in legalizing “physician assisted death.” From the Wall Street Journal blog post on the initiative: A state measure known as Initiative 1000 passed by a margin of 59% to 41%, making it legal for doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medication for patients with less than six months to live. … Continue reading
Upside down ethics
That last post definitely points out the mess of current bioethics: Autonomy as the first principle, before the more traditional “Heal when possible, but first do no harm.” Is the purpose of medicine to give the patient what he or she wants, or is it to save lives and restore or maintain health? As I’ve … Continue reading
>On Conscience: Philosophical, not Scientific or Medical Debate
>Some of you may have already seen this transcript from the September ’08 President’s Bioethics Council meeting. Three physicians gave testimony on September 12th, including Dr. Farr Curlin, Dr. Howard Brody, and (from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, although she says she’s not there as an ACOG representative) Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly. Council … Continue reading
How not to promote organ donation
Julian Savulescu, the British ethicist who opined that religious doctors should shut up and perform, is back. This time he’s advocating the donation of organs from people who are not dead or dying, but who have “suffered such severe injury that they would be permanently unconscious, like Terry Schiavo, who would be allowed to die … Continue reading
American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Convention
I’m on my way to Cleveland, Ohio for “Future Tense,” the Annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Tonight, there’s a pre-conference symposium focusing on the novel, House of God. The book written by Dr. Stephen Bergman was a rite of passage when I was pre-med. It’s now 35 years … Continue reading
Discussion on Abortion in Australia
A med student’s blog, “Degranulated” posts his thoughts about the presence of anti-abortion protesters outside and inside his medical school. It seems that the Australian medical community is in the midst of a debate like ours on conscience rights, with new laws that impose a duty to refer and /or perform abortions on physicians. Public … Continue reading
George on “Obama and Infanticide”
“Obama chose to defend the widest possible scope for legal abortion by building a fence around it, even if that meant permitting a child who survives an abortion to be left to die without even being afforded basic comfort care.” Two of the greatest ethics minds today explain the controversy surrounding Senator Barack Obama’s blatant … Continue reading
“The motivation is abortion”
“The motivation is abortion,” says R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “If the Supreme Court allows states to declare embryos as personhood, you would be in a position to say immediately that all abortions have to stop.” LifeEthics covered this story a few days ago, … Continue reading
Surfing is brain exercise (buy your parents a computer)
Surfing the Internet stimulates middle-aged and elderly brains more than reading a book. In fact, the more you surf, the more stimulation of blood flow to the brain. At left, a functional Magnetic Resonance Image (fMRI) of the brain while reading a book and at right, the brain while surfing the web. The red areas … Continue reading
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- “American Fiction,” the movie – and life
- Maternal Morbidity with Premature Rupture of Membranes
- Counterintuitive abortion report
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- Comprehensive review of Texas’ Heartbeat Act
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