God. Real. Right.

JoAnn Fitzpatrick has an insightful Op-Ed on Massachusetts’ failing “universal” health care plan in the Boston Herald this week. (click here for the editorial.) The problem with Massachusetts’ “ideal” solution is the same problem any nationalized health care plan will face, and it is as simple as economics. But explaining to most people that no effort to pretend otherwise can overcome the laws of supply and demand which govern human behavior is futile. People are certainly intelligent enough to realize, for instance, that government cost caps only reduce the amount or level of care or slow the economy overall so that everyone suffers; but they are not interested enough to learn about all the channels through which economic pressures will inevitably seek level.
So here is one very simple, inevitable, fundamental way to explain why universal health care will have exactly the same problem faced by the current health care system in America. Right now, almost no one can pay for major medical care outright. So they depend either on government guarantees of basic care (like emergency rooms and county hospitals) or on insurance. Either way, the amount of care provided is limited by the paying or covering agency. A person with Read the rest of this entry »

On June 19th I wrote about pro-life pharmacist’s facing accusations of unethical behavior for not providing abortive remedies to their customers.
Now doctors are facing the same pressure. Here’s the issue. Suppose a woman goes in for an exam and her obstetrician realizes there is a problem with the fetus which would lead a pro-choice physician to recommend a “therapeutic” abortion. But suppose this doctor is pro-life. Obviously she is not going to perform an abortion. But because she is pro-life she cannot participate in a abortion either, not even by referring her patient to a different physician. For those who are pro-life that decision is obviously justified. But for those who are pro-choice it appears to be a breach in the physician’s agreement to benefit her patient.
Obstetricians and gynecologists have lived Read the rest of this entry »

The British online paper, Telegraph, is reporting that the Human Fertilisation (sp) and Embryology Authority has issued a third animal-human hybrid embryo license, this time for human DNA to be inserted into de-nucleated pig embryos, producing human-pig hybrid embryos. While the idea is as creepy as b-grade science fiction, it is not fiction. It is happening right now. The only reason people are not fully engaged in disputing it is that the embryos are almost immediately destroyed in order to harvest stem cells for research and therapy.
Surely average Joes are disgusted by the fact that scientists are producing human-pig hybrids. But then again, shouldn’t they be equally disgusted Read the rest of this entry »

Can a woman have surgery so that she appears to be a man? Yes. Can she take hormones and suppressants so that she appears even more to be a man? Yes. Can a culture decide it wants to use the word “man” to describe people who work really hard at appearing to be a man? Unfortunately, yes.
But can a man stop taking hormone therapy and then naturally produce an egg to combine with another man’s gametes and end up with an embryo? No. Only a woman who has worked really hard at appearing to be a man to the point where her culture was willing to call her a man can do so.
The New York Times (click here for the article) thinks the “pregnant man–’Mr.’ Beatie”–described in their story has “powered past traditional definitions of gender.” But notice that the entire Read the rest of this entry »

In January of 2004 a pharmacist in Denton across the street from where I teach bioethics refused to fill a prescription for a rape victim. Protesters marched because the prescription he refused to fill was for a contraceptive which, as I was told the story, he believed would be used as a “morning-after” pill. When used for that purpose, the prescription can prevent implantation of an embryo, and therefore…well…which words should be used next? Does it “prevent a pregnancy” since the woman never has an embryo attached to her uterus, and is therefore never pregnant? Or does it “end a human life” since there is a living embryo destroyed as a result of the treatment?
Of course, for someone adamantly and consistently pro-life, the latter language is obviously correct. The consistently pro-choice position is equally firmly committed to the former language. But for many purportedly pro-life individuals, Read the rest of this entry »

Three words: conflict of interest. There is no more comprehensive or practical tool for identifying ethically indefensible behavior than conflict of interest. Yet its significance is often overlooked and its implications ignored. The New York Times published a story (click here to read it) on June 6, 2008 dealing with exactly this problem in a couple of research professors from Harvard’s medical school. Apparently they have been doing pediatric research on the use of anti-psychotic drugs (yes, anti-psychotic drugs in children, which the Times claims has increased some forty-fold in part because of this research) while failing to report substantial income from the drug companies who benefit from successful test results. Of course, the scientists claim objectivity Read the rest of this entry »