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TagNational Review

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We Need to Keep Medicine “Evidence-Based”

A new approach seems to be arriving — so-called science-based medicine. What is the difference?

We supposedly live in an era of “evidence-based medicine,” in which medical decisions are guided by the published data. But that approach is now being criticized because the “best evidence” is often in the eye of the beholder. A new approach seems to be arriving — so-called science-based medicine. What is the difference? It seems more than a mere shift in terminology, in that science-based medicine would allow fewer heterodox approaches than permitted by the evidence-based model. A new advocacy article, “Evidence-Based Medicine Is Broken but Science-Based Medicine Can Fix It,” published by the American Council on Science and Health (which claims to debunk “junk” in medicine), explains (emphasis in the original): The idea of evidence-based medicine has been around since Read More ›

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Portrait close up of one young beautiful attractive blonde young girl holding camera and taking selfie picture at the beach enjoying outdoors free time with sunset in the background.

National Review: Let AI Take Over Social Media Influencing

AI influencers are revealing how vapid social media really is

We’ve recently commented on the AI influencer phenomenon, which seems to be taking social media by storm. With advanced AI imaging, more AI influencers are popping up, and they already look comparable to the likes of Kim Kardashian. The social media influencing world depends on primarily women selling their bodies for revenue. Instagram has tended heavily in this direction, and with the advent of OnlyFans, the temptation to flaunt oneself so provocatively is tangible for many. National Review writer Haley Strack thinks that the AI influencer horde will out-compete real-life influencers and eventually rule out the need for humans at all. She writes, Some criticize AI for giving young men another possibly perverse, sexual outlet online — but men who Read More ›

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Don’t Censor Western Books

For thousands of men and women, the Western canon served as a lifeline

The King’s College, a longstanding evangelical Christian college in Manhattan’s financial district, announced financial shortcomings in February, and as of this month, canceled fall classes and laid off a majority of its faculty members. King’s is small, but its students have historically been driven, smart, and ambitious. With a goal of transmitting the spiritual riches of the Judeo-Christian tradition to the next generation, the college saw students go on to elite graduate schools and take influential roles in journalism, law, academia, and the arts. While the details of King’s seemingly ultimate demise is complicated, Joseph Loconte, a former history professor at King’s, writes that its death spiral is reflective of something deeper and endemic in the West. For so many 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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Newborn baby holding mother's hand.

Abortion: Switching Off a Computer?

This is the kind of thinking that results from rejecting the intrinsic moral value of human life

This is the kind of thinking that results from rejecting the intrinsic moral value of human life. Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer — who is most famous for secularly blessing infanticide — just compared abortion to turning off a computer. He first claims that should an AI ever become “sentient,” turning it off would be akin to killing a being with the highest moral value (which for him, as described below, need not be human). From the Yahoo News story: We asked internationally renowned moral philosopher Professor Peter Singer whether AI should have human rights if it becomes conscious of its own existence. While Professor Singer doesn’t believe the ChatGPT operating system is sentient or self-aware, if this was to change he argues it should be given some moral status. Read More ›

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The true cost of “free” social media

It’s free but… are we? George Gilder points a way forward.
He thinks that expected massive increases in computing power will enable blockchain technologies that allow users to safely bypass the global data monopoly that Google and similar firms represent. Read More ›