I once asked a young physician whether he had received any training in medical ethics during medical school. I wondered whether he had been taught how to handle some of the complex moral questions that can arise when practicing medicine.
It turned out that he had taken only one ethics class during his four years of medical school, and it was a rather loose-knit affair. For the first part of each class, he told me, students were presented with medical cases that raised ethical questions.
A key argument in the embryonic stem cell debate — widely invoked by scientists, patient advocacy groups, and politicians — involves the fate of frozen embryos.
Barack Obama put it this way in 2008: “If we are going to discard those embryos, and we know there is potential research that could lead to curing debilitating diseases — Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease — if that possibility presents itself, then I think that we should, in a careful way, go ahead and pursue that research.”
The head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, embraced this same line of reasoning by
Discussions about the morality of stem cell research often focus on the differences between adult stem cells and stem cells derived from embryos.
The adult variety, such as those derived from bone marrow or umbilical cords, are already providing an impressive array of treatments and cures for sick people, while the embryonic kind are not.
Adult stem cells can be obtained without crossing any moral boundaries, whereas embryonic stem cells cannot, because they are obtained by destroying young human beings still in embryonic stages of growth.
When I do presentations on in vitro fertilization, audience members sometimes ask whether test tube babies experience psychological problems as they grow up.
Although they clearly face elevated health risks for a number of diseases and physical disorders, the psychological effects on these children have not been thoroughly studied.
In a recent article entitled “How We Created the First Synthetic Cell,” Dr. J. Craig Venter waxes broadly about how his research team succeeded in constructing a bacterial cell out of its component parts.
The story, which has captured the imagination of the media, appears to be a jaw-dropping breakthrough: “Scientists have created artificial life in a laboratory!” Such headlines evoke images of a Frankenstein creation, a Jurassic Park monster, or an alien life form. But in the final analysis, the scientific achievement of Venter and his team, although notable, is considerably less dramatic.
While it may cost an arm and a leg to live in the state of New York these days, it may soon cost a liver or kidney to die there.
Residents of the state have been debating a legislative measure put forward by a state lawmaker that would automatically enroll all residents as organ donors. The law would rely on what is termed
In recent years, some medical practitioners have suggested that death from dehydration may not be such an unpleasant way for patients to die. This conclusion, however, remains rather doubtful.
Thirst and appetite are very primal drives, and anyone who has ever done a voluntary fast knows well the discomfort that arises from even a single day of fasting.
When I make presentations on end-of-life decision making, I sometimes have audience members approach me afterwards with comments like, “You know, Father, when my mom died six years ago, and I look back on it, I’m not sure my brothers and I made the right decisions about her care.”
Remarks like these serve to remind us how the circumstances surrounding death are important not only for the person who passes on but also for those who remain behind.
An important but often unacknowledged angle of the abortion debate involves the serious effects that legalized abortion has on men.
A recent scandal surrounding John Edwards, former North Carolina Senator and U.S. presidential candidate, brought this issue into plain view.
Mr. Edwards publicly acknowledged an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter in the summer of 2008, a few months after pulling out of the presidential race. Even after admitting to the affair, however, he continued to deny having fathered Ms. Hunter’s daughter, Quinn, until January of 2010, when he finally admitted that he was, in fact, her father.
Back in the early 1800s, most practicing physicians refused to believe that the simple gesture of washing their hands between patients could help prevent the spread of childbed fever among the pregnant women they examined.
Even in the face of compelling scientific evidence, they remained stubbornly opposed to the practice. As a result of this intransigence on the part of the medical establishment over a period of many years, childbed fever (also known as puerpural infection) ended up unnecessarily claiming the lives of thousands of young women.
