The Bioethics Weekly

This Week — CBHD Fellow John Dunlop, MD, offers a case study on end of life issues, entitled “Permissibility to Stop Man’s Ventilator on His Request” originally published in Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics.

Podcast

Employment Opportunities

Administrative Assistant (Temporary Part-time): CBHD is seeking to hire on a temporary basis, beginning immediately and ending on or before June 30th. Previous experience in bioethics is not necessary. The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, possess strong organizational, communication, and computer skills, as well as being adaptable to a changing workplace environment. If you or someone you know is looking for a position in the northern suburbs of Chicago, please have them send a resume to Michael Sleasman, Managing Director & Research Scholar of the Center, at msleasman@cbhd.org.

Director of Development, CBHD & Bioethics at Trinity (Fulltime): Position is responsible for developing a strategic plan, performing ongoing analysis and program implementation to achieve the development goals for Trinity's bioethics initiatives. This person will be versatile, able to perform competently in a wide variety of development functions. These functions will include event planning and execution, major gifts, foundation relations, annual fund solicitations, marketing and communications, church relations, and data management. For more information click here.

Quote of the Week

"This is really a complicated subject. I mean, knowing your genes or particularly the single nucleotide differences within your genes is, at best, a little bit like looking at a great painting and analyzing its pigments. It isn't going to give you the picture. It's going to tell you something about the fundamental components out of which the mix of environmental influences, gene/gene interactions, stochastic effects, and so forth have helped to fashion the person. So one of the things we could definitely do is to clarify what you can actually gain from such understanding, what do tests tell you, which is a lot less than some people seem to think. Much of it will end up being statistical because of the complexity of gene/gene interactions, among others."

— Dr. William Hurlbut, President's Council on Bioethics member, and Consulting Professor, Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford Medical Center, Stanford University, in "The Ethics of Newborn Screening," bioethics.gov, March 7, 2008.

Happenings

Medical Professionals Conference: Balancing Faith, Family and Practice
April 10-12, 2008
A Focus on the Family Event
Tel: 800/ 232-6459, or download Conference Brochure

Ethical Challenges in Surgical Innovation
May 8-9, 2008
InterContinental Hotel & Bank of America Conference Center
Cleveland, OH
Tel: 216/ 932-3448

5th International Symposium of the Definition of Death Network
May 20-23, 2008
Plaza America Convention Center
Varadero Beach, Cuba

Emerging Issues in Embryo Donation and Adoption
May 29-31, 2008
Marriot Crystal Gateway
Arlington, Virginia

News Highlights

This couple want a deaf child. Should we try to stop them?
From embryo selection to abortion, fertility treatment to stem cell research, medical advances have created a furious ethical debate. Now MPs must decide how far science should be allowed to go.

Like any other three-year-old child, Molly has brought joy to her parents. Bright-eyed and cheerful, Molly is also deaf - and that is an issue which vexes her parents, though not for the obvious reasons. Paula Garfield, a theatre director, and her partner, Tomato Lichy, an artist and designer, are also deaf and had hoped to have a child who could not hear. (Guardian)

OP-ED: For the Love of the Game
Like the Mitchell Report, most discussions of biotechnical enhancement are preoccupied with the novel biotechnologies themselves. Commonplace in such discussions are quasi-Talmudic (and inconclusive) arguments about whether and how, for example, steroid use differs from special diets as a means for increasing the mass of muscles, or how an erythropoietin injection (”blood doping”) differs from taking vitamins as a means for increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. But a deeper analysis of enhancement should begin not from assessments of the technical means, but from explorations of the desirable ends. Only if we have a clear idea of the nature and dignity of human activity, in sport and beyond, can we see how that dignity is threatened by the age of biotechnological enhancement. (This was the approach adopted in Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, the 2003 report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, which we helped to draft and from which, in this section of our essay and the next, we freely draw.) We begin by examining athletic activity itself, seeking to illuminate the integrity of the athlete; and move then to consider the activity of the spectators, so as to illuminate the integrity of sport and its value for all of us. . . . (The New Republic)

Monday,March 10, 2008

US Upholds 2 More Stem Cell Patents
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a second and a third University of Wisconsin-Madison patent covering embryonic stem cell research at the school. (Washington Post)

Would you deposit to ‘biobank’?
Wanted: Your genes.

Hoping to link illnesses to genetics and lifestyle, the federal government is exploring the possibility of recruiting a half-million Americans to contribute their DNA and health information to an ambitious national “biobank.” (Mercury News)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Chemical brain controls nanobots
A tiny chemical “brain” which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.

The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test. (BBC)

Op-Ed: Why McCain has the best health-care plan
His is the only one of the candidate proposals that has a chance of getting medical costs under control. An argument for some free-market sanity. (CNNMoney)

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

‘Vaccinate your kids or you’ll go to prison’ / Belgium takes hard stand in world fight against dread disease
As doctors struggle to eradicate polio worldwide, one of their biggest problems is persuading parents to vaccinate their children. In Belgium, authorities are resorting to an extreme measure: prison sentences. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Op-Ed: Women’s Neuroethics? Why Sex Matters for Neuroethics
How and why women and men are different is a topic of enduring scientific and public interest. Over the past decade, the number of neuroscience studies documenting sex differences in brain anatomy, chemistry, and function, and involving cognitive domains such as emotion, memory, and learning, has exploded (Cahill 2006). Although scholars in the field of neuroethics have explored advances in neuroscience from many angles, few, if any, have paid attention to neuroscientific work on sex differences or to gender as a primary category of analysis. (AJOB)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Egypt’s organ donors: Looking within for wealth
The business has thrived for years in Egypt. The country has no laws and little oversight regarding most transplants. Statistics are unreliable. Medical groups estimate that as many as 500 unlicensed kidney transplants are performed each year, but a legislator investigating the practice indicated that the actual number is much higher. (Los Angeles Times)

Banking on the future of stem cells
Representatives of 21 stem-cell funding agencies from 19 countries — members of the International Stem Cell Forum — met in San Francisco at the end of February to discuss collaborations and how to coordinate cell banks and registries. Among them was Leszek Borysiewicz, head of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), who spoke to Nature about the effort. (Nature News)

Friday, March 14, 2008

Each week the top news stories, as determined by the staff at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity are sent out via email.

[Note: News stories, Quote of the Week, and events do not represent the Center's views. For additional commentary on many of the issues they raise, please see the CBHD web site at www.cbhd.org.]

Please visit http://www.bioethics.com for daily posts on bioethics news and issues.

Printer- Friendly Version

Send Page To a Friend

The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CBHD, its staff, board or supporters. Permission to reprint granted as long as The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity and the web address for this article is referenced.