To her credit, reporter Sharon Kirkey at least provides a brief counterpoint to the pro-euthanasia narrative, something often entirely missing in many media.
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Quebec’s chief coroner promises an investigation. Don’t expect much to come of it.
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Such compassion is on the outs in these “enlightened” days. Indeed, it may now be that more babies with Down syndrome are killed in the womb than are born.
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The court did not rule — as Glucksberg did not about states — that countries cannot legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia.
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The dog’s life is easier than human life in some ways; if he isn’t in trouble with humans or other dogs, everything is fine.
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The “human evolution” narrative that ignores the critical distinction handicaps the thinking of philosopher Hugh Desmond and many others.
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Our conversation about the ethics of collecting and using genetic data brought out two important themes that are often addressed here at Mind Matters News.
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It seems to me that the best approach to the policy opinions of mainstream bioethicists is to consider the source, shrug, and carry on.
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The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him… And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 Read More ›
IVF is the industrial manufacture of human beings. The right to life of the embryo is a bulwark against dehumanization for all.
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The ruling not only did not reference God, it was meticulously based on precedent. So those who seek to remove protection from IVF embryos must lobby for that.
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It doesn’t sound as though any solution that doesn’t tackle the basic honesty problem is likely to work. Meanwhile, the public should not be blamed for doubt.
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Overall, Nightshade may prove more useful than lawsuits to artists. It is embedded in pixels, visible only to AI, not to humans.
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Those who think that Harvard’s best and brightest should rule over us might want to invest some time to discover how some of them really think.
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Far from being independent superintellects, AIs — without human input — are subject to Model Collapse, where they start reprocessing information into nonsense.
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Physicist Rob Sheldon warns, when ridiculous inhumane ideas are routinely aired, we become more willing to accept inhumane ideas that are in fact quite viable.
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Note well that the concept of the “completed life” need not involve any physical illness, disabling condition, or psychiatric malady at all.
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Africans are lured abroad in hopes of a job, maybe in high tech even, and it sometimes turns out that the job is — organ donor.
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The events of the past week in Israel have left the civilized world reeling. Hamas has killed more than 1,200 Jewish innocents in the most violent eruption of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust, and it seems likely a war will follow that will soon kill thousands more innocent people. As we ponder and pray over this mass slaughter, it is worthwhile to reflect for a moment on what these events tell us about the ideological and scientific dogmas of the 21st century — about atheism, determinism and Darwinism. Are these dogmas true, and do they provide a meaningful understanding of man and of moral action? If atheism is true and there is no God, there is no Moral Lawgiver. The concept of Read More ›
Editor’s Note: The following piece was originally published in Newsweek in June 1993. Today is my 76th birthday,” the letter began. “Unassisted and by my own free will, I have chosen to take my final passage.” Suicide. My friend Frances died in a cold, impersonal hotel room after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, with a plastic bag tied over her head suffocating the life out of her body. Frances was not a happy woman. She had family troubles. She suffered from chronic lymphatic leukemia and was facing the difficult prospect of a hip replacement. She also had a chronic nerve condition that caused her to feel a burning sensation on her skin. But Frances was lucid, aware and involved. Read More ›