By Wesley J. Smith “Futile care” is a pronounced threat to patient autonomy and the equality of all human life. This is the idea. When doctors think that the quality of a patient’s life is not worth living — but the patient, family, or surrogate want care to continue — doctors can overrule patients and …
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By Right to Life UK A man who stabbed a pregnant woman multiple times in Belgium will not be prosecuted for the death of her unborn baby. On Monday, in the Belgian province of Liège, a man, named only as Aslan, stabbed a woman numerous times in the face and neck after an argument broke …
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Scientists acknowledge the ethical problems — and then ignore them By Michael Cook Another step in “an explosion of new techniques and ideas for studying early development” of human embryos came last week from Israel. Researchers there have successfully grown mouse embryos for 12 days, which is about half the animal’s natural gestation period. The …
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By Nancy Valko I wanted to be a nurse since I was 5. I was drawn to nursing not only because I wanted to help people but also because medical ethics standards were so high, especially in contrast to some of the corrupt business practices that I saw. I graduated from a Catholic nursing school …
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By Nancy Valko Most people volunteer for the pro-life movement. I consider myself a draftee. For me, there was no “choice.” I became a conscript because of personal and professional experiences that followed in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision. I was a young intensive care unit nurse in 1973. Like most people …
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By John Stonestreet with Roberto Rivera In the 1976 made-for-television movie, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” a then-unknown John Travolta introduced Americans to a condition technically called “X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency.” Or, as people have called it since the movie, “bubble boy disease.” Children with “bubble boy disease” can’t fight off infections that the …
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By Michael Cook Over the centuries the Hippocratic Oath has expressed the ideals of the medical profession, although nowadays other versions have supplanted it for graduating medical students– if they take any oath at all. If taken literally the Oath is an anachronism. Who today “swears by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, …
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By Xavier Symons There has been significant debate in recent years about the ethics of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOCs). Some examples of PDOCs include patients in a minimally conscious state and those in a persistent vegetative state. Prevailing wisdom in both law and ethics suggests that decisions about …
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By Dave Andrusko A congressional subcommittee heard testimony today from three experts on the now-more-important-than-ever issue of ethical alternatives to scavenging fetal tissue from aborted babies. As NRL News Today has reported over the past few days, the Trump administration is planning to fund such alternatives with $20 million over the next two years. This …
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By Dave Andrusko Sarah Terzo’s except from an academic study posted elsewhere today inspired me to revisit the personal stories from young residents that appeared in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, under the headline “Four Residents’ Narratives on Abortion Training: A Residency Climate of Reflection, Support, and Mutual Respect.” I first learned of the …
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By Wesley J. Smith Until recently, healthcare was not culturally controversial. Medicine was seen as primarily concerned with extending lives, curing diseases, healing injuries, palliating symptoms, birthing babies, and promoting wellness—and hence, as a sphere in which people of all political and social beliefs were generally able to get along. That consensus has been shattered. …
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In the United States’ most culturally aligned nation, a race toward the once-unthinkable accelerates By Wesley J. Smith It never made any sense. The assurance that active euthanasia would always be limited to terminally ill, competent adults just never made any sense. Here’s the problem: Once a society widely supports eliminating suffering by eliminating the …
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