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Tagbioethics

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Lit up black modern hallway

The Technocracy Continues to Grow

We live in a time where individual freedom is under material threat from an emerging technocracy

Readers may recall two cases from the UK: Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, infants with catastrophic illnesses whom the courts did not allow to be taken out of their hospitals — as desired by their parents — to receive treatment elsewhere. Now, also in the UK, a conscious and capable 19-year-old patient, referred to in legal documents as “ST,” with an apparent terminal disease has been told by a court that she can’t decide to continue life-extending treatment after the hospital sued to be able to move her to palliative care against her will. From the legal ruling involving the National Health Service Trust (emphasis added): The Trust’s case is that ST is “actively dying”. It became clear during the course of the oral evidence I heard Read More ›

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equipment and medical devices in modern operating room

Medical Association is “Neutral” on Assisted Suicide

This is a matter of the gravest ethical concern

How in the world can a medical association be neutral on granting doctors a license to kill or assist the suicide of their patients? This is a matter of the gravest medical ethical concern, an action, remember, that was strictly proscribed 2,500 years ago in the Hippocratic Oath. Utter Cowardice But yield to the pressures of the activists is what the UK’s Royal College of Surgeons has done, in an act of utter cowardice based on a survey answered by only 19 percent of its members. From the Daily Mail story: The Royal College of Surgeons is no longer opposed to assisted dying and is now ‘neutral’, it has been announced. The organisation’s council members voted after discussing survey results, which showed an appetite for change, a Read More ›

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Beauty injection concept. Syringe with violet liquid for hypodermic injection.

This Country Just Legalized Euthanasia

The law isn't even limited to those who are terminally ill

Alas. The president of Portugal just signed into law a bill legalizing euthanasia by lethal injection. It is not limited to the terminally ill — which is at least honest, since that is not what euthanasia/assisted suicide is really all about. From the Reuters story: The law specifies that people would be allowed to request assistance in dying in cases when they are “in a situation of intense suffering, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable disease.” It establishes a two-month gap between accepting a request and the actual procedure and makes psychological support mandatory. Strict guidelines and all that jazz. Not only are they unlikely to be strictly enforced but will soon be redefined from protections to barriers, Read More ›

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Hand of doctor  reassuring her female patient. Medical ethics and trust concept

Alzheimer’s, Medical Ethics, and Choosing Life

From preemptive assisted suicide to selective abortions, the medical field suffers a host of ethical dilemmas. In today’s podcast episode, memory-loss expert Stephen Post joins neurosurgeon Michael Egnor to discuss Alzheimer’s, bioethics, and the intrinsic dignity of human beings.  Additional Resources

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Doctor hand holding a stethoscope listening to heartbeat

“Harm Reduction” is Euthanasia’s New Euphemism

Bioethics is growing increasingly monstrous. And that matters.

Once killing the sufferer becomes a societally acceptable means for ending suffering, there is no end to the “suffering” that justifies human termination. We can see this phenomenon most vividly in Canada, because it is happening there more quickly than in most cultures. For example, a recent poll found that 27 percent of Canadians polled strongly or moderately agree that euthanasia is acceptable for suffering caused by “poverty” and 28 percent strongly or moderately agree that killing by doctors is acceptable for suffering caused by homelessness. I can’t imagine that being true ten years ago before euthanasia became legal. Euthanasia mutates a society’s soul.  Killing as “Harm Reduction” This kind of abandonment thinking finds enthusiastic, albeit not unanimous, expression among secular bioethicists. In fact, two Canadian bioethicists just Read More ›

Airplane Controls

Will killer drones make killing easier?

That, says a bioethicist, depends on who the pilots are
Heather Zeiger tells us that traditional aerial combat pilots tend to think the same way when piloting drones from an office but it may be a different story when cell phone addicts, who tend to lack empathy, are recruited. Read More ›