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Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia have long been the redheaded stepchildren of the prolife movement. They are dutifully included in the litany of life-related issues, yet they have not attracted the sustained attention—or passion—that...
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I have had the good fortune to know a number of fine fiction writers over the years, and to a man (or woman) they always prayed for the crucial literary award that might gain them the readership their talent deserved; one joked ruefully that he...
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We’re still debating whether what we’re doing in Libya can rightly be described as war, though bombs dropped amid an “intervention” are just as deadly. But where’s the debate over whether it’s fair or accurate to assert that Republicans in Congress...
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It is hard to imagine a more tragic or tortuous case than that of Terri Schiavo, the thirty-nine-year-old Florida woman whose husband and parents are battling over disconnecting her from the feeding tube that has kept her alive for thirteen years.
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The concept of the common good, ancient in origin, would seem on the face of it an ideal foundation for health-care reform. We all get sick and depend on others to care for us, and many of us will need expensive treatments that are beyond the means...
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Last August, President George W. Bush announced his decision banning federal funding for stem-cell research that involved the destruction of living human embryos. At that time, Bush also announced the formation of a National Bioethics Commission to...
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I’ve been having a lot of sex lately. Back when I was randy teenager this would have seemed like an impossible dream-come-true, but now that I’m thirty-seven-and my wife and I are still trying to fill our empty nursery-it’s a bit...
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Speaking last month to an international congress of physicians and ethicists in Rome, Pope John Paul II declared that the “administration of food and water, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life...
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In December, the President’s Council on Bioethics released Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (HarperCollins). The six-part report provides a balanced but critical assessment of actual and prospective developments in...
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Austin L. Hughes, John Cornwell, Michael O. Garvey , The Editors
Introduction
"One doesn’t want to get carried away, but I have to say I’m pretty carried away." That’s how Francis Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute, expressed his exuberance over the decoding of...
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It does not require an expert to see that we are living in era of highly bureaucratized knowledge, a time that more than one pundit has described as "an age of experts." We have experts on everything-inter- and intrapsychic life, gender equity,...
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One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be our response to the combined power of new reproductive technologies and manipulation of the human gene. Two recent news stories illustrate the heart of the problem: scientists...
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For years, and rightly so, bioethics has wrestled with the "technological imperative." The phrase has characterized the excessive use of technology at the end of life, or the rush to unnecessary tests and procedures. Did you really need that...
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Consortium of Jesuit Bioethics Programs
Most Americans know the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who suffered cardiac arrest and subsequently lived for years in a persistent vegetative state while moral, legal, and political wrangles over her care divided her family and roiled the...
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Consortium of Jesuit Bioethics Programs, William E. May
William E. May
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Before the December release of Dignitas personae, it had been twenty years since the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) came out with a bioethics document.
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With regret and some trepidation, Commonweal and many other prolife Catholic commentators and organizations, including the Catholic Health Association, disagreed with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about the health-care-reform bill that...
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Liberals may lament the administration’s failure to make progress on immigration and climate-change legislation in this congressional session, but it may be time to shift energies to protecting what has already been passed.
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When President Barack Obama announced an executive order creating a Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, he said, “As our nation invests in science and innovation and pursues advances in biomedical research and health care, it’s imperative...
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In current battles between church and state about health care and health insurance, it is often the poor and uninsured who end up as unintended casualties. A recent episode in Kentucky demonstrates how this happens—and just how much is at stake.
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In the summer of 2003, the renowned bioethicist Daniel Callahan testified before President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, which was gathering material for a report on stem-cell research. Stem-cell research holds a therapeutic promise so...
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Three Generations, No Imbeciles Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell Paul A. Lombardo John Hopkins University Press, $29.95, 384 pp.
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My esteemed Notre Dame colleague, John Finnis, will receive the third annual Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics from the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC), a conservative Christian think tank. Paul Ramsey (1913-88) was a pioneer in...
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While lecturing in Australia in June, I was overcome by a sense of déjà vu. The Australian newspapers were dominated by a bitter controversy between a Catholic prelate and Catholic politicians regarding embryo-destroying stem-cell research. For a...
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Debora Spar is a professor at the Harvard Business School who has studied the evolution of Internet technology from early, anarchic beginnings into a more mature and consolidated industry. In her new book, The Baby Business: How Money, Science,...
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More than a year after the death of Terri Schiavo, discussions about her case remain highly polarized. What principles should guide decisions about people who can no longer speak for themselves? Who should make those decisions, and what do various...
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The contemporary literature of bioethics, although vast, can often make for unsatisfactory reading. It tends to place too much emphasis on patient autonomy, yet fails to adequately examine the ethical implications of procedures such as genetic...
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The old adage that hard cases make bad law is often true, but it is also true that hard cases can help crystallize fundamental moral issues. Thus, at the risk of reviving the painful passions that swirled around Terri Schiavo’s death, I want...
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From the Terri Schiavo controversy to the stem-cell debate to the conflict over intelligent design, 2005 was rife with contentious issues that portrayed religion and science as wholly separate and competing realms of thought and experience.
Two...
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On October 1, Leon Kass stepped down as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Kass was succeeded by one of the “founding fathers” of modern bioethics, Edmund Pellegrino, professor emeritus of medicine and medical ethics and adjunct...
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I am suspicious enough of the Disney empire to feel skeptical that it will prove an ally in the moral education of my new son. Take Disney’s Pinocchio. In this version of the classic Italian children’s tale, Jiminy Cricket advises the puppet...
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It was an arresting photograph: President George W. Bush holding a baby, and surrounded by children, all of whom began life as “excess” embryos otherwise destined for destruction or possibly for use in stem-cell experimentation.
It...
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A recent address by Pope John Paul II regarding the care of patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) has left many people—Catholics and others—scratching their heads.
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The law tells stories. So argues Catholic legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon in her short but fascinating book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. Glendon draws on anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s claim that law is a "culture system"-it "tells...
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Last August 9, President George W. Bush approved federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells, but only if certain conditions are met-including, most controversially, the stipulation that the cell lines to be used must have originated with...
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Ever since President George W. Bush announced his decision regarding federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells last year, newspapers worldwide have reported on various issues surrounding such research. Many people are confused...
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"Ladies and Gentlemen: Today Only: The Elixir of Life! We have in these nearly invisible, no-bigger-than-the-period-at-the-end-of-this-sentence embryos the secret to long life and perfect health. These tiny cells—they call ’em blastocysts back in...
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Advertising is the lingua franca of the modern age. Everyone has something to sell or something they want to buy, and advertising is what brings sellers and buyers together. Guaranteeing the quality of the merchandise is a routine advertising...
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In the region where I live and teach on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the economy centers on a thriving poultry industry. On a number of occasions, when my boys were young, I would trot off with them on a school field trip to admire the wonders of...
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When we say that something is beneath our dignity, what do we mean, exactly, and how do we know? How should we define or measure dignity?
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It was 4:15 p.m. when my nurse gave me a “heads up” about the next patient. With a weary expression, she showed me a note affixed to the chart. “Mother is in waiting room and wants the patient to be tested for STDs,” it read. I scanned the chart...
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The arguments about the alleged war between science and religion have missed something important: the difference between science and technology.
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Recently I was asked to serve on an advisory committee of a research group developing new techniques to preserve fertility for cancer patients. The research is cutting-edge, scientifically elegant, and enormously promising. It is also likely to be...
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No one was shocked when President Barack Obama lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research put in place by George W. Bush. Obama was, after all, fulfilling a campaign promise—albeit a misguided one—and his decision...
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I have taught ethics in the religion departments of several very different colleges and universities for quite a few years, and there are moments when I wish that I had instead specialized in something quite different—perhaps texts and artifacts...
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Writing in the August 14 issue of Commonweal (“End of Discussion”), the Christian ethicist Gilbert Meilaender eulogized President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, which President Barack Obama dissolved in June.
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Sometimes, when talking to younger audiences, the theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill will describe herself as a “relic” of the distant and benighted era before the Second Vatican Council.
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Not all religions have imposed moral precepts upon their adherents, but all those known as “world religions” have made such a firm connection between their practice and the practice of the moral virtues. Living a morally upright life is, in the...
