Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryMedicine and Health

syringe-with-anaesthetic-drug-propofol-ready-for-infusion-st-203852037-stockpack-adobestock
Syringe with anaesthetic drug - Propofol, ready for infusion.

The Lies in New York’s Assisted Suicide Bill

New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate
Falsifying death certificates, for example, prevents transparency. Investigators will be unable to access the information they need to conduct independent studies. Read More ›
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Multiracial team of professional medical surgeons performs the surgical operation in a modern hospital. Doctors are working to save the patient. Medicine, health and neurosurgery.

How a Split Brain Enables a Unified Mind Still Baffles Us

In the comments following Sean McDowell’s interview with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, a viewer asked, are the parts of a split brain still really connected?
We are learning new things about the mind–brain complex every day and not everything is what we expected to find. Read More ›
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Bioethics And The Law

Bioethics: Just Another Social-Justice Political Movement Now?

A new survey shows how the movement has swung toward pushing woke “social justice” initiatives as its primary purpose
Respondents overwhelmingly wanted an even more monolithic approach to social justice through what could be argued as an indoctrinating approach to education. Read More ›
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Black dominoes chain on table background

Estonia’s Supreme Court Declares a Right to Suicide

At least these rulings candidly cut through the toxic smoke so often generated by assisted-suicide advocates
Such rulings demonstrate that the real goal/destination is a right to death by any competent person for any cause and assisted by anyone. Read More ›
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hands holiding red heart with kidney, world kidney day, organ donor day

Human Kidney Suppliers Should Be Donors, Not Vendors

The government would be, essentially, paying people to harm themselves. People who are already disadvantaged would be most likely to volunteer
There are ample reasons why only one country in the world — Iran — allows kidney-selling. Not everything should be a sellable product. Read More ›
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Sunrise on mountain with foggy in Medicine lake at Jasper

Here’s Neurosurgeon Mike Egnor on Sean McDowell’s Show

With a couple of revealing excerpts from the transcript
The soul can seem a bit of a mystery because the popular idea of the soul, as a sort of “ghost” is not the traditional philosophical (or Christian) one. Read More ›
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Epilepsy Concept An illustration represents epilepsy with brain wave patterns

Brain vs. Mind: A Very Revealing Fact About Epileptic Seizures

I have treated thousands of patients with epilepsy. Seizures can result in a variety of unexpected behaviors and emotions. But let me tell you what they DON’T do…
The fact that seizures never result in abstract reasoning implies our reason is not a material power of the body but an immaterial power of the spiritual soul. Read More ›
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little bald girl after chemotherapy session with her caring and supportive brother in a hospital room, supporting family, hope and recovery from cancer

A Compassionate Doctor Keeps Hope Alive

As this story shows, sometimes the hope is not for a cure so much as for assurance that the patient has not been abandoned
There are signs of a needed pushback against a bioethics-driven “just check all the boxes” approach to terminal care where the need for hope is brushed aside. Read More ›
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view form medical partition taiwanese female in vegetative state resting alone on bed in bright hospital.

Are People in a Persistent Vegetative State Mindless? Maybe Not

They often can and do think. Research in the area helps us understand the relationship between the mind and the brain better
While none of this research is decisive, the materialist paradigm is challenged by awareness in PVS. The dualist perspective better fits the evidence. Read More ›
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Beauty injection concept. Syringe with violet liquid for hypodermic injection.

New Jersey Program Aims to Prevent Suicide— Just Not All Suicides

In New Jersey, the self-terminations of people with a prognosis of six months or less ceases to be “suicide” when facilitated by a doctor
Yet terminally ill patients opt for assisted suicide typically because of issues such as fears of burdening family, losing dignity, not untreatable pain. Read More ›
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Aerial View of Coal Fired Power Plant on the Ohio River

Medical Journal Article Urges Mass Propaganda Against Fossil Fuel

Medical intellectuals may be clueless, but most people understand that modern society depends on the ubiquitous use of fossil fuels
Plastic, used in countless medical products, could not be manufactured including artificial heart valves. Irony: Plastic cells are used in solar panels Read More ›
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Surdose

Famed Ethics Prof Endorses Suicide for Old People in New York Times

Peter Singer supports suicide not just for those who are ill now but who fear that they might become so
Do the philosophers not understand how bigoted and anti-intrinsic dignity of life their relativistic assumptions are about when a life is worth continuing? Read More ›
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Exploring the intricacies of human cognition a dual brain representation in artistic form

Can One Person Really Have Two Different Consciousnesses?

The idea that split-brain surgery can create two separate minds is immortal — in science fiction
Real-world research shows the remarkable resilience of damaged brains housing single minds. Our brains are full of complexities and exceptions to rules. Read More ›
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Young scientist wearing a lab coat and protective glasses is adjusting a microscope while working late in a laboratory

At NIH, Bhattacharya Hopes to Restore Open Discussion in Science

In a recent interview, he seemed surprisingly conciliatory to those who attempted to ruin his career over his dissenting views on Covid.
What he most wants to advance is open discussion in science. Science, after all, advances more from doubt than from certainty. Read More ›
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Intensive care unit in the prison hospital

When Top People “Must Be Right,” Dissent Becomes Mental Illness

A healthcare historian looks at the history of the use of psychiatry to crush alternative viewpoints
If all sadness, however caused, is depression and all anger, however motivated, is aggression, government can easily create contexts or pretexts for interference Read More ›
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AI speech technology, text-to-speech, voice technology, speech synthesis, natural language processing, NLP, artificial intelligence, deep learning, neural network

Implant enables woman to control speech synthesizer with thoughts

The key benefit of the new system is that it is much faster than traditional methods, cutting the time from internal speech to audible speech to less than three seconds
Because a stroke took away her ability to speak, the researchers used her wedding video to synthesize a more natural-sounding voice. Read More ›
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Enteral feeding dropper and a old man patient in the hospital with oxygen mask in the background

Bioethicists Get Legacy of Terri Schiavo Death Wrong

Some bioethicists complain that her protracted starvation death has powered pro-life forces into political prominence
In reality, after the Schiavo case encouraged acceptance, majorities supported such deaths and people with severe brain injuries became a disposable caste. Read More ›
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Woman putting red sign with words

NYT on COVID: Not “Badly Misled.” One of the Worst Misleaders!

The Times writer smears legitimate doubt by associating it with unnamed questionable persons and causes — that works if people don’t know the story
Legacy media are giving way to broader-based social media. But trust in science is also at a low ebb. And what’s the replacement for science? Read More ›
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Dementia-related amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles , neurological disorders, protein deposits

AI in Biology: The Disease Connection — When Proteins Go Wrong

Some of the most crucial proteins for human health—the ones we need to understand most urgently—are the very ones that AI has the hardest time modeling
The issue is not simply that AI struggles with intrinsically disordered regions — it is that the very premise of IDR behavior contradicts the way these models operate. Read More ›
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Kids running up in the forest

Medical Support for “Gender-Affirming Care” Is Cracking

Amid stubborn denials, a new article in a prominent journal admits that the “science” is far from settled and recommends caution, not enthusiasm
States like California that treat parents who refuse to consent to radical procedures as abusers can no longer claim a scientific basis for their policies. Read More ›