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Writing in the New York Times, Linda Hirshman says she believes Tara Reade but she’ll vote for Joe Biden anyway because of Donald Trump. Yesterday in a New York Times column Linda Hirshman said she believes Tara Reade, but she’s going to vote for Joe Biden anyway because anything is better than Donald Trump. That is to say, she believes Biden sexually assaulted Reade in a locker room when Reade worked on his Senate staff years ago. It’s nonsense at this point to try to discount or denigrate every new corroborating witness who comes forward to bolster Reade’s claim, Hirshman...

"Says Frieden, who’s been fiercely vilified by the tobacco industry for his bluntly aggressive attack on cigarettes: “I was once quoted, accurately, as saying that during the years I spent fighting TB, my enemy was a micro-bacterial—tuberculosis—but now it’s an even lower form of life: tobacco executives! An executive from Phillip Morris actually wrote to me and complained, basically, that this was a form of hate speech, and I had to agree. So I no longer use that expression. Now I just stick to the facts and describe tobacco company executives as mass murderers.”

In a bizarre rant on Twitter earlier today, atheist Richard Dawkins wrote that choosing not to abort a child with Down Syndrome would be "immoral." The conversation started when Dawkins tweeted that "Ireland is a civilised country except in this 1 area." The area was abortion, which until last year was illegal in all cases. A Twitter user then asked Dawkins if "994 human beings with Down's Syndrome [having been] deliberately killed before birth in England and Wales in 2012" was "civilised." Dawkins replied "yes, it is very civilised. These are fetuses, diagnosed before they have human feelings." Apparently I'm...

First, a disclaimer: Selling your organs is illegal in the United States. It’s also very dangerous. Handing off an organ is risky enough when done in a top hospital, even more so if you’re doing it for cash in a back alley. No, really: Don’t do this. OK? OK. There are many organs one can theoretically do without, or for which there’s a backup. Most folks can spare a kidney, a portion of their liver, a lung, some intestines, and an eyeball, and still live a long life. That said, donating a lung, a piece of liver or a section...

2013 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book Utilitarianism, by the British philosopher John Stuart Mill...This week: what sado-masochists are getting up to at Harvard. Utilitarianism is a broad church which admits parishioners of varying persuasions and degrees of fervour. But there are two pillars to which all subscribe, one for society and the other for individuals. The first is the famous maxim, “the greatest good for the greatest number”. John Stuart Mill modified this primitive calculus of pleasure and pain to take into account the pleasures of the intellect. In his well-known words, "it is better...

Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas A study conducted by Daniel Bartels, Columbia Business School, Marketing, and David Pizarro, Cornell University, Psychology found that people who endorse actions consistent with an ethic of utilitarianism—the view that what is the morally right thing to do is whatever produces the best overall consequences—tend to possess psychopathic and Machiavellian personality traits.

Halloween is coming, and that means itÂ’s time to consider frightening things. And what over the past two centuries has been more horrific than the idea of utilitarianism? Because of it, parts of the Twentieth Century were as bloody as a John Carpenter movie. Thus, can be it be a mere coincidence that Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism resembles the Tall Man from the horror flick Phantasm? Stick with me here; itÂ’s Friday, the day when regular rules of logic are relaxed. In the Phantasm movies, the Tall ManÂ’s mission, as far as anyone understands its bizarre plot, was...

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...

Utilitarianism has a hideous strength when it comes to medical ethics. If even a ghastly procedure can “save lives,” well, who’s to say it’s immoral?   For years, scientists and celebrities supporting embryo-destructive stem cell research have used two arguments. First—blind to the destruction of the embryo itself—they argue embryonic stem cell research will save lives. Second, they maintain that embryos leftover from fertility treatments will otherwise be wasted. Now, one stem-cell expert is using these same arguments to promote harvesting organs from aborted fetuses.Speaking at a conference in March, Oxford University stem-cell expert Sir Richard Gardner commented that he...

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....

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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...

LONDON, March 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Oxford University stem cell expert has urged the use of aborted children in organ transplants as a solution to the shortage of available organs. Sir Richard Gardner has called for a feasibility study on the possibility of obtaining organs from the bodies of aborted babies.He said, "It is probably a more realistic technique in dealing with the shortage of kidney donors than others."The Daily Mail reports that pro-life and Christian groups have called the proposal "morally abhorrent," and said it will result in abortions being timed to suit transplant patients. Dr Peter...

This battle will be won, make no mistake. It will be won before my generation, the baby boomers, go to our graves, just as we made sure no one could discriminate against us in middle age. We will refuse to be forced to depart life through the torture chambers of terminal diseases for lack of the right to die at the right time of our own choosing. It will be won because 80% of the public support it - and have done consistently in polls for the past 25 years. The power of the religious lobby that has such a...

Helping someone to commit suicide is a matter of conscience, the Prime Minister said today. Gordon Brown condemned the idea of new laws to allow assisted suicide - but he did nothing to stop it in the wake of a landmark test case decision that paved the way for more deaths in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. His response in the Commons to the outcry over the televised suicide of motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert appealed instead for compassion for families agonising over the suffering of a loved one. The end: The moment motor neurone sufferer Craig Ewert, 59,...

OXFORD, UK, October 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to Dr. Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and neonatologist and Oxford graduate student Dominic Wilkinson, bold steps may have to be taken to increase the supply of organs for transplant. This, they say in a co-authored article published today, could be accomplished by removing one simple impediment - the requirement of donor "death." In a separate article, published last week, Wilkinson suggested an even more radical plan – mandatory organ donation. "We could abandon the dead donor rule," wrote the pair in today’s article,...

LifeNews.com Note: Ken Conner is a pro-life attorney who was intimately involved in the fight to save Terri Schiavo and is the former president of the Family Research Council. He is now the chairman of the Center for a Just Society.A waste. A burden. That is how influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock views people suffering from dementia. Lady Warnock, a prominent adviser to the British government, told the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine that people suffering from dementia should be allowed to kill themselves rather than continue to burden their families and Britain's National Health Service. Sadly,...

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain. She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society. The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves. Her comments in a magazine interview have been condemned as "immoral" and "barbaric", but also sparked fears that they may find wider...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A writer for a libertarian group has written perhaps the most scathing attack on pro-life vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin since the Alaska governor was announced weeks ago as John McCain's running mate. Nicholas Provenzo condemns Palin for the birth of her baby Trig, who has Down syndrome.Provenzo, who writes for the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, not only bashes her for allowing Trig to be born, but says she should have made the so-called morally justifiable decision to kill him in an abortion.The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism bills itself as a...

It doesn't matter who wins! Seriously, guys, America is about to become, once again, the coolest place on Earth. An era is ending. If you still think the US is home to all that is fatty and unwholesome and militaristic and cloth-eared and generally low-grade, and not much else, it may be time to give the Yanks another chance. Nothing Sarah Palin and her followers can do will prevent America's steady movement away from social conservatism Politically, socially, culturally, America is - as we watch transfixed and, in spite of ourselves, impressed - being born again. Suddenly we are reminded...