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Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply of donated organs. There is nothing wrong with that in the abstract, of course. Increasing the supply would alleviate much human suffering and is devoutly to be wished.  But therein lurks a great danger. Increasing supply is a worthy goal only so long as the organs are obtained ethically. But there is a growing chorus among the medical and bioethical intelligentsia to obtain more organs by harvesting living patients. Yes, some of our most influential voices now seek a license to...

October 06, 2009, 0:00 p.m. The Convenient DeathBy the Editors Wait for patients to die before taking their organs, and the organs won’t be as fresh. Let doctors take the organs from living patients — even if it means causing them to die a little faster than they otherwise would — and the supply of usable organs will go up. Some other patient will get a second chance at life, and the dead guy won’t miss anything: What could possibly go wrong with this idea? The editors of Nature are well aware that this proposal might seem a little...

Question from the bottom of page 2: Most proponents of the right to die would agree with your ideas about euthanasia. But you lose them when you suggest that it's OK to kill a baby before it's 28 days old, because until that time, it is not self-aware and "doesn't have the same right to life as others." Answer: I wrote that in 1995. I have changed my position. Now I believe you should look at every individual case.

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

Obama science czar John Holdren stated in a college textbook that "illegitimate children" born to unwed mothers could be taken by the government and put up for adoption if the mother refused to have an abortion. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, argued that "illegitimate childbearing could be strongly discouraged" as a socioeconomic measure imposed to control population growth. As previously reported, WND has obtained a copy of the 1970s college textbook "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment" that Ehrlich co-authored with Malthusian population alarmist Paul R. Ehrlich and Ehrlich's wife, Anne. The authors argued involuntary...

On June 5, 2008, the Starr family's life changed forever. Patrick Starr, father of two and a softball fanatic, was playing his favorite sport when he collided with another player and fell backward, striking his head on the field. The impact caused brain damage that put the Pasadena man into a coma, in which he has remained ever since. Now his wife of 16 years, Beth, is prepared to let him go - but she wanted to be sure she and their children Ashleigh, 15, and Zachary, 8, are financially secure first. "That's what he would want," she said. Starr...

TEL AVIV – There is no moral concern regarding cloning human beings since human embryos, which develop into a baby, are "only a handful of cells," argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein. "If scientists will be using and cloning embryos only at a very early stage when they are just a handful of cells (say, before they are four days old), there is no good reason for a ban (on cloning)," wrote Sunstein, who was confirmed by the Senate last week as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. "It is silly to...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken. Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.

For the last couple of weeks we have been blasting Cass Sunstein on this blog. Many of you have also picked up the sword and begun fighting this Obama appointment as well. Now, we need to really stand up. The Senate will be coming back into session next week and Harry Reid has already mentioned that he wants to make confirming Sunstein one of his first priorities. We CANNOT let this happen. Check out this story today on Sunstein from Matt Cover at CNS News. If this doesn't make you pick up a phone and call your Senator, I don't...

42.90 Euros Per Arm The German company Tutogen's business in body parts is as secretive as it is lucrative. It extracts bones from corpses in Ukraine to manufacture medical products, as part of a global market worth billions that is centered in the United States. Anatoly Korzhak, a pensioner and former engineer, died in Kiev on August 5, 2004. His body was picked up at 2 a.m. and taken to the forensic medicine institute in the Ukrainian capital. That same night, Korzhak's daughter, Lena Krat, received a telephone call and was asked to come to the institute as soon as...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Question with boldness." That is the motto of radio host and FOX News television host Glenn Beck, who says he asks questions no different than ordinary Americans - he just has an army of researchers to help him explore these questions. But what the question explores is the disturbing relationship between eugenics, Nazism, and the imposition of Obama's health care plan upon the United States.Like the old adage "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," Beck has looked back to the past to get a glimpse of the future....

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Louisiana's top prosecutor said Friday he will not reopen a probe into allegations of euthanasia at a hospital crippled by Hurricane Katrina, despite new statements from a doctor that he drugged a terminal patient to "get rid of her faster." Dr. Ewing Cook said that as staff at Memorial Medical Center desperately tried to care for and evacuate patients, making spot assessments of which ones might survive, he scribbled "pronounced dead at" on the patient's chart, intending to fill in time and other details later. "I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The latest news from the world of genetic manipulation comes from scientists who are conducting research on monkeys that they say could lead to the birth of a human being with three parents in order to eliminate the possibility of inheriting and genes that could cause certain diseases or conditions. Genetic engineering has long caused problems for pro-life advocates and bioethicists because of the manipulation involved and research that destroys human life in order to create a so-called perfect human race. It also leads, they say, to a society which devalues the disabled and the physically...

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care. Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals...

Hollywood takes up a social issue, hard data and clarity can be elusive. My Sister’s Keeper, a drama in theaters this summer, provides a handy example of Tinseltown’s tendency to let tears trump truth. Told through a series of flashbacks, the plot is set in motion by a medical specialist’s shocking proposal to a mother desperate to save her gravely ill child: Create a genetically engineered sibling who can donate bone marrow and other vital tissue to cheat death. That suggestion would stop most parents in their tracks. But this mom grabs hold of the idea and runs with it....

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/08/15/obamacare-compassion-and-choices-seeking-to-become-planned-parenthood-of-death/

Obamacare and the Ghost of Terri Schiavo Why Americans Worry About The Democrats Pulling Grandma's Plug Dan McLaughlin Wednesday, August 12th at 4:54PM EDT 2 Comments NPR’s headline on yesterday’s town hall on health care by President Obama: Obama Says His Health Plan Won’t ‘Pull The Plug On Grandma’ The NY Daily News had a similar headline using that quote in this morning’s print edition, as does this Reuters item; the NY Post less delicately shortens the headline to ‘WE WON’T PULL PLUG ON GRANNY’.This is not the place the White House wanted to be in right now. Even George...

MONTREAL, August 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Angus Reid-La Presse poll carried out on August 4 and 5 has found that more than three quarters of Quebecers agree that euthanasia should be legalized in Quebec.Jaideep Mukerji, Vice President of Public Affairs at Angus Reid Strategies, said he was surprised by the results of the poll of 800 adults in Quebec."You'd be surprised how Quebecers are in favor of euthanasia and that their opinion on the subject is clear," Mukerji told La Presse, adding that support for the legalized killing was consistent across most social and economic strata."The responses of Quebecers...

Recently in a Washington Times radio interview, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was expressing his concerns regarding health care reform. He commented that the GOP’s handling of my sister Terri Schiavo is an example of what he fears, stating, “It is inserting itself into the very fabric of the decisions that you make, have to make every single day. It’ll make the Terri Schiavo case look like a walk in the park.” I understand the point that Michael Steele was trying to make. He was using Terri as an example of what it would mean if the government was to get...

The doctor will kill you now Posted: July 23, 2009 1:00 am Eastern By Andrew Longman © 2009 I have commented before that the purpose of socialized medicine is not health care, but rather government-run death care. The choker bill presently being rammed down America's throat in the Congress is no exception. In light of the recent history where hospitals have forcibly dehydrated people to death, everyone should pay attention to their gag reflex. On page 430 of the 2009 Death Care Act we find: (B) The level of treatment …may range from an indication for full treatment to an...

ROME, JULY 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The idea that some people are genetically inferior, and need to be eliminated or prevented from reproducing, is a mentality that still persists, despite the battering it took after the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. In a revealing interview published July 12 in the New York Times Magazine Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States was asked about abortion, among other topics. Referring to the Supreme Court decision that opened the doors to abortion, Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions about abortion funding, Ginsburg commented: "Frankly I had thought...

Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was ( diagnosed with brain cancer) in May of last year, is telling the world that nationalized medical care is "the cause of his life." He wants to see it pass as soon as possible, before he departs this vale of tears. The prospect of Kennedy's passing is viewed by the liberal press with anticipatory tears and mourning. But they are not asking the proper question by their own lights: That question -- which will be asked for you and me when we reach his age and state in life...

Obamacare dictates end of life counseling every five years (or more)... See for yourself: Here is the section dealing with end of life counseling for seniors. This section talks about possible life sustaining treatment. These orders, of course, will be "standardized and uniquely identifiable throughout the State." This life sustaining treatment will be "guided by a coalition of stakeholders includes representatives from emergency medical services, emergency department physicians or nurses, state long-term care association, state medical association, state surveyors, agency responsible for senior services, state department of health, state hospital association, home health association, state bar association, and state hospice...

Last month, President Barack Obama quietly disbanded the President's Council on Bioethics, a deliberative body whose changing cast of erudite and ideologically diverse members had spent the past eight years thinking through today's toughest moral questions. Members received only one day's notice of the council's dissolution, forcing them to cancel a planned meeting and leave unfinished several major reports that were due to be released soon. Their abrupt dismissal received little press, aside from a New York Times article that noted Obama's reason for dismantling the council. According to White House press officer Reid Cherlin, the council was "a philosophically...

Bioethics: The former director of the National Institutes of Health, once an enthusiast for embryonic stem cells, now says their future has "dimmed." So why is the administration bailing out research into such therapies while troubled states like California have committed billions?Aside from creating or saving a few research jobs, the administration's decision to federally fund embryonic stem cell research is, as we've noted, a bailout of bad science. It throws money at an avenue of research that time and adult stem cell progress have passed by. Applauding the administration's move was Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who echoed the claims...

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much? If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone...

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much? If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone...

Benedict XVI returns to the principal themes of his social encyclical reaffirming the need for a global commitment to development, to eliminate "social inequality and structural injustices that are no longer tolerable." The social question has become an "anthropological” issue which implies a way of conceiving man in truth, body and soul. Prayers for Honduras and a farewell ahead of holidays in Les Combes (Aosta Valley). Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "The absolutism of technology, which finds its clearest expression in certain practices contrary to life�, could "draw dark scenarios for the future of humanity": Benedict XVI returns to warn against...

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican's case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home...Afterward, the Vatican said the leaders discussed immigration, the Middle East peace process and aid to developing nations. But the Vatican's statement also underscored the pair's deep disagreement on abortion. "In the course of their cordial exchanges, the conversation turned first of all to questions which are in the interest of...

Analysis by Dr. John Shea MD FRCP(C), Medical Advisor to LifeSiteNews.comJuly 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In 2006, research done by Dr. Gerald Buckberg, a cardio-thoracic surgeon and UCLA expert, demonstrated that a person can survive cardiac arrest for an average of 72 minutes if they are given the following treatment: cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, the use of a heart-lung machine to keep blood and oxygen circulating, and gradual restoration of blood and oxygen flow. This research was done at hospitals in Alabama and Ann Arbor, Michigan and also in Germany. Of 34 patients, seven died, only two had permanent neurological changes...

Vatican City, Jul 10, 2009 / 11:37 am (CNA).- Pope Benedict XVI received President Barack Obama this afternoon in his private library, and after 36 minutes of private conversation, the pair emerged without providing any details about their topics of conversation. Nevertheless, the Holy See revealed that the Pope gave Obama an “unannounced gift”--a Vatican document on bioethics and the right to life. "The G8 has been very productive, 20 billion dollars have been allocated [to poor countries]; that's something concrete," President Obama told the Pope when he asked about the summit, as photographers and journalists were ushered out...

Researchers in Australia are applying for permission to help parents conceive specially selected babies whose primary aim will be to save the life of siblings with a fatal blood disease. The procedure, already used once - apparently successfully - in the U.S., has set off debate, as the potential benefits, risks and ethical implications are weighed against each other.. Doctors at the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development in Melbourne are to seek approval in the days ahead on behalf of three couples, two Australian and one from New Zealand, who have children suffering from Fanconi anemia, a disorder that ...

[Snip] STURM:My question to you is, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, quality of life? Or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age? [Snip] GIBSON: But the money may not have been there for her pacemaker or for your grandmother's hip replacement. [Snip] OBAMA: But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional...

The New Jacobin Elite | Print | Written by William F. Jasper    Wednesday, 24 June 2009 06:00 The Socialist Party of Great Britain is celebrating the reissuing of Peter Taaffe’s book, The Masses Arise: The Great French Revolution 1789 -1815. “Its republication by Socialist Publications, in time for the 220th anniversary of this great event in July 2009, is extremely timely,� says the party’s website. A different page on the party’s site promoting the same book instructs readers: “An understanding of the French Revolution remains crucial for all revolutionaries. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky studied it intensely to gain an...

Science: The president's Council on Bioethics is summarily dismissed when it disagrees on the need for more federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The scientific method doesn't include firing those who disagree with you.Inspectors general are apparently not the only ones to pay for annoying the White House by doing their job. The 18-member council existed to provide the president with advice on the moral and ethical implications of the rapid advances in science and medical research. It exists no more. The council existed to ponder whether we should do something just because we can. Apparently President Obama wanted not...

Zurich, Switzerland (LifeNews.com) -- The Switzerland government is considering a proposal that would ban the assisted suicide clinics run by the pro-euthanasia group Dignitas. The move would end the practice of so-called suicide tourism and move the European nation out of the category with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.The 1942 Swiss law allowing assisted suicide has led to a practice where residents of other nations, especially England and Germany, travel to the country to end their lives.Federal government officials said last week that they want to discuss "legal barriers and a ban on organized suicide assistance."The proposal would limit who...

Tuesday June 23, 2009 Obama Abruptly Sacks Bio-ethics Panel Critical of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The White House has dismissed the members of the President’s US Council on Bioethics just a few months before their mandate expires, indicating their services are no longer required by the President and that he is looking for a more “practical� advisory board. The New York Times reported that Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, told the paper that President Barack Obama saw them as "a philosophically leaning advisory group" designed by the previous...

LifeNews.com Note: Dr. David Prentice is Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at Family Research Council. Up to July 2004 he had spent almost 20 years as Professor of Life Sciences, Indiana State University, and Adjunct Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine.The President's Council on Bioethics is no more. With a one-day notice, the members were told in a letter from the President that their services were no longer required. Pack up, get out. Forget the fact that they had a couple of interesting reports coming out soon, one more meeting, and that the Council's tenure...

Obama Scraps President's Bioethics Council After Forcing Embryonic Funding The President's Council on Bioethics is no more. With a one-day notice, the members were told in a letter from the President that their services were no longer required. Pack up, get out. Forget the fact that they had a couple of interesting reports coming out soon, one more meeting, and that the Council's tenure would expire come this September. See http://www.LifeNews.com/bio2874.html

In the Oscar winning movie “Million Dollar Baby,” the female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald ends up paralyzed from the neck down and asks her coach to end her life. “I got what I needed. I got it all. Don’t let ‘em [the doctors] keep taking it away from me,” she begs. When those words were uttered in 2004 the debate over assisted suicide was underway, but today the debate strongly rages on in the national spotlight. Jerry Dincin, Lake County resident and president of the Final Exit Network, thinks this is an issue that people need to start thinking about. “This...

The mother of the UK's first sextuplets for more than a quarter of a century has told how she ignored medical advice to abort several of the foetuses. Nuala Conway, 26, from Dunamore in Co Tyrone, said she was warned about the high risks of carrying on with the multiple pregnancy, but decided to put her faith in God. She was given the option of terminating some of the unborn babies at 14 weeks and was advised that this was the best option. However, Mrs Conway, who is a Roman Catholic, said that the suggestion of a termination made her...

The solicitor representing an IVF couple whose last embryo was implanted in another woman by mistake has said it was "an accident waiting to happen". The couple had been trying for a second child with their only remaining embryo when the IVF Wales clinic in Cardiff, discovered the error. The woman wrongly implanted chose to have a termination after finding out what had happened. Their solicitor, Guy Forster, from national law firm Irwin Mitchell, revealed there had been two previous near misses at the clinic the year before. The Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust has apologised for the blunder and...

A 66-year-old woman with terminal cancer has become the first person to die under Washington state's new assisted suicide law, an advocacy group said Friday. Linda Fleming, of Sequim, died Thursday night after taking drugs prescribed under the ''Death with Dignity'' law that took effect in March, said Compassion & Choices of Washington. The organization said Fleming was diagnosed last month with advanced pancreatic cancer. She would have had to have been diagnosed by two doctors as terminal in order to qualify for assisted suicide. The group said Fleming died at home with her family, her dog and her physician...

Dr. Leon R. Kass, a widely published author, award-winning humanities teacher, and one of America’s leading moral philosophers and experts on medical ethics, will deliver the 2009 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. “Leon Kass is an outstanding scholar, a gifted teacher, and one of our nation’s leading humanists,” said NEH Acting Chairman Carole M. Watson. “He has brought the wisdom of the humanities to bear on many topics, from bioethics...

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on the Disability Matters blog site. It is reprinted here with permission. There's been very little attention paid to an interview President Obama did with the New York Times the day of his major speech at Georgetown University on April 14. I was especially interested in the section of the interview dealing with health care, and to learn of the President's perceptions of end-of-life issues. It's not pretty. Read on. For starters, President Obama opined: I have always said, though, that we should not overstate the degree to which consumers rather than doctors...

Stem Cells from Blood Render Embryonic Sources Obsolete by Brian Thomas, M.S.* On the heels of President Barack Obama’s March 9 order to use public monies to support embryonic stem cell research,[1] another source of stem cells has become available—blood. Blood would be an ideal supplier for stem cells because it is a renewable tissue and harvesting blood components does not end life. These reengineered cells would also be patient-specific and avoid immune system difficulties, unlike embryonic sources which are derived from another person entirely. A recent study discovered a way in which blood could generate stem cells.[2] The researchers...

PHILIP Nitschke is considering moving to the US to continue his campaign for voluntary euthanasia after a hostile reception from British immigration authorities on the weekend.The Australian campaigner known as "Doctor Death" said last night that until he was detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours on Saturday he had been considering moving to Britain to escape Australia's increasingly tight restrictions on the dissemination of information on how to kill yourself. "That looks unlikely now, because after that reception I guess the British will be less likely to let me stay," Dr Nitschke told The Australian. "I'm not sure, but...

A United States-based fertility doctor claimed to have cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women. In an interview published on Wednesday, Panayiotis Zavos told Britain’s Independent newspaper that although none of the women had had a viable pregnancy as a result, the first cloned baby could now be born within a couple of years. “There is absolutely no doubt about it... the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,” he said, quoted by the paper. “If we intensify our efforts, we can have a cloned...

Health Service paramedics have been told not to resuscitate terminally-ill patients who register on a controversial new database to say they want to die. It has been set up by the ambulance service in London for hundreds of people who have only a few months to live so that they may register their 'death wishes' in advance. It is believed to be the first in the country, but other trusts around the country are expected to follow suit to comply with Government guidelines which state that patients' wishes should be taken into account, even at the point of death. Patients'...

LifeNews.com Note: Joseph Infranco is senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.   On March 9, with a stroke of his pen, President Obama signed an executive order that provides federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The president’s terse but chilling justification was that “science should trump ideology.” The statement is a masterpiece of legerdemain, disguising its false premise and frightening implications while miscommunicating the nature and meaning of science. The first...