Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryMedicine and Health

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Euthanasia Medical Intervention

The Netherlands Already Allows Infant Euthanasia

It’s only logical. If killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, why limit the killing to adults?

Canada has jumped so enthusiastically into the euthanasia abyss that I have little doubt that infanticide will eventually be allowed there.

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Pensive indian girl lost in thoughts suffering from depression

Study: Mental Illness More Likely After Abortion Than Childbirth

This large, broad-based study was published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed journal by authors not identified with the pro-life movement

If informed consent and “choice” are to mean anything, abortionists should be duty-bound to inform pregnant women about this risk.

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Portrait of smiling multinational people different religions stand together. National Religious Freedom Day. January 16. Holiday concept. Template for background, banner, card, poster and wallpaper

Religious Involvement Generally Predicts Better Mental Health

The signal that rises above the research noise is mostly positive. The question, in most cases, is what it points to

Harold Koenig and colleagues are confident that improving the quality of research will strengthen the usefulness of the overall database.

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Neurocomputational modeling electrophysiological encoding and signal decoding pathways digital brain emitting wave like signals symbolizing thought processing and neural data transmission

Successfully Deciphering the Thoughts of Speechless People

The new technology may be a great advance for persons with disabilities but it raises serious issues about privacy once it gets into the wrong hands

Though no one discusses it directly, while the researchers designed the device to avoid invading privacy, others will doubtless have the opposite intent.

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Vials with Sodium pentobarbital used for euthanasia and lethal inyecion in a hospital, conceptual image

The Atlantic Details the Horrors of Canadian Euthanasia

The story includes examples of people who have had themselves killed because they couldn’t access proper support services, and many other cases

MAiD turns some suicides and homicides into a “good.” A 2023 poll found that 28% of Canadians polled favored allowing euthanasia for homelessness.

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Panoramic view of the Earth, sun, star and galaxy. Sunrise over planet Earth, view from space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

Only Bioethics Can Save the Planet! Really?

Some bioethicists want to include “planetary health” among the disciplines for which they propose ethical rules

Hopefully, the growing hubris of bioethicists who think they can tackle the world’s most intractable problems — even war — will push them into irrelevance.

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Nurse helping sick senior women to eat fruits at hospital - concept of healthcare, medicare and caretaker

Should Caregivers Be Forced to Starve Dementia Patients to Death?

If you did such a thing to a dog, you would go to jail. When will we say, “Enough: This is too much to ask”?

A very influential bioethicist supports forcing caregivers to cause death by dehydration and starvation, even when a patient willingly eats.

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Comatose male patient in hospital.

Killing for Organs Pushed in the New York Times

Beware of efforts to “broaden” the definition of death to address the shortage of transplant organs

Redefining as dead someone who is actually living would subjectivize the value of human life. We are either all equal while alive, or we are not.

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Woman doctor with stethoscope takes an oath at the beach, symbolizing medical commitment in serene seascape.

Attacks on Medical Conscience: Forcing Doctors to Take Human Life

As more states legalize assisted suicide and abortion through the ninth month, the medical conscience issue is again bubbling to the surface

The movement to quash medical conscience has been ongoing for many years and it has become politically partisan.

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Medical professional carefully carries an organ transplant container down a hospital corridor, hoping to give someone a second chance at life

Organ-Procurement Lapses Threaten Trust in Transplant Medicine

Something appears to have gone badly off the rails in the field of procuring organs after heart death

The push for organs has apparently grown so intense that corners may be being cut, endangering still-living patients and treating them as so many organ farms.

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AI chatbot assisting doctor health care and medical support. artificial intelligence in medicine and robotic chat customer services. futuristic concept in smart healthcare system.

Chatbots Flunk at Resolving Medical Ethics Dilemmas

Surprisingly, despite evident limitations, they are being used in ethics tutorials in medical schools

The researchers discovered a limitation when they tweaked some standard puzzlers and – never short of an answer – bots didn’t pick up on the change.

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Suicide and support

Swiss Death Clinics Celebrated By Suicide Pushers

One Swiss clinic even “prioritizes people who are elderly but not seriously ill”

Geriatric suicides used to be considered a tragedy. But these days, increasingly, they are celebrated.

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Dynamic illustration of electrical currents coursing between neurons reflecting the essential biological processes that drive human thinking emotions and memory formation.

Researchers: Adult Human Brains Can Grow New Neurons

The Karolinska Institutet-based team found early-stage brain cells in older people in the hippocampus, the memory area of the brain

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor urges caution: Making a difference in neurodegenerative diseases will be more difficult than simply growing new neurons.

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Medical and puberty blockers symbol. Medical uniform, white card with words 'puberty blockers'. Beautiful white background. Copy space. Medical and puberty blockers concept.

Journal Article Ignores Medical Objections to Puberty Blockers

Allowing an author to ignorecontrary evidence and increasing doubts about puberty blockers, etc., undermines New England Journal of Medicine’s purpose in being

It’s disingenuous not to at least acknowledge the scientific doubts about treating youthful gender dysphoria that not only persist but are growing.

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Modern IVF micromanipulator with Petri Dish in the laboratory of the in vitro fertilization. for insemination of the egg freezing. Sperm cryopreservation. Ovum fertilization procedure

Michael Shermer Disagrees With Me on the Ethics of IVF

He sees a contradiction between my respect for and embrace of children conceived via IVF and my ethical qualms about the process of IVF: “Another example of how religion clouds rationality”

It is quite possible to seek good ends (children) by bad means (their industrial manufacture). That’s why Christian ethics are needed.

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AI Replacing Doctors: The Rise of Robo-Healers - An Ominous Gaze into a Tomorrow Where Machines Don White Coats, Administering Precision Care and Revolutionizing the Medical Landscape.

Is Microsoft’s New AI System Better Than Doctors? Probably Not.

A critic notes that Microsoft’s AI system didn’t solve the problems, but merely repeated the solutions that it was trained on

Trying to understand the rationale of big monopolists such as Microsoft and Google is often a fool’s errand.

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Coma patient. Young woman with intravenous drip in hospital bed

Update: Brain-Dead Mother’s Baby Is Born

I was surprised at the controversy my plea for the baby’s life generated. I heard the trite “Handmaid’s Tale” trope more than once

If Adriana’s body had been removed from life support, there’d have been two deaths. Can’t we celebrate that, even as we mourn the mother who was lost?

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Close-up of CRISPR technology in action, DNA strands glowing under advanced lab lighting

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and the Human Industrial Revolution

To stand against IVF is not easy, because it provides infertile couples the blessed opportunity to conceive children. But it is the door into new and hellish bioethics

In a world beset by a growing chasm between the strong and the weak, IVF offers technology to manufacture men and women on scale and on special order.

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The beam of light in the path of the magic forest

Excerpt from The Immortal Mind: As Death Nears, a Sudden Light…

These widely recorded lucid episodes imply that the mind is more than the disjointed activities of a failing brain

Should a neuroscience approach to terminal lucidity merely mean reassuring the world that someday we will prove that it is just random brain noise?

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nurse showing something to elderly man on wheelchair..

As Euthanasia Looms, How to Save the Hospice Movement

Often now people approach me after a speech or call in on talk radio to tell me that they do not trust hospice to properly care for their loved ones.

Leading palliative care doctor Ira Byock offers four proposals to address the current problems with hospice care.

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