Planeta Bioética

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I don’t understand why people don’t connect the dots when it comes to suicide. On one hand, officials wring their hands–appropriately–over suicide rates. But at the same time, legislators and activists promote suicide/euthanasia for the sick. That’s a mixed message any way you look at it.

In South Australia, where I recently visited, a pending state parliament bill would allow doctors to kill patients asking to die who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It even interferes with proper mental health treatment for suicidal conditions in the terminally ill. And yet, suicide is so worrisome that the state coroner wants to bring greater attention to the problem by treating such deaths in public reporting like auto accidents. From the story:

A VICTIMS-OF-SUICIDE toll similar to the official road toll could help prevent some of the nearly 200 such deaths in South Australia each year, State Coroner Mark Johns believes. He has been discussing the idea of a toll with suicide experts and wants a public debate about how it could work and how the taboo subject of suicide is communicated to the public – and to families who may be able to prevent the tragedies, AdelaideNow reported.

In an opinion piece in today’s Advertiser Mr Johns says the number of suicides he encountered in his position was the only thing that shocked him when he took up the job five years ago. “The suicide rate in this state is probably double the road toll and yet as a subject, it is not given anything like the same attention,” he says.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees! Yes, we should combat suicides–all suicides–not just those of the healthy. Otherwise, anti suicide efforts–as some suicides are promoted and facilitated–will be akin to spitting in the wind.

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I am in Sydney Airport waiting for the first leg of an 18 hour trip home. I thought I would reflect on the last two very busy and intense weeks, and what I hope was accomplished.

The last time I was asked to tour Australia, in August 2001, it was to blunt the moral outlawry of Phillip Nitschke. In what was probably my most successful advocacy effort ever, we hit him hard for advocating that suicide be made available to “troubled teens,” and exposed his import of a plastic suicide bag from Canada—an effort that started a process that resulted, after I left the country, in the government outlawing such dangerous suicide paraphernalia. … Read the rest of this entry »

Cuando había dinero, los gobiernos hacían profesión pública de fe verde; ahora que toca recortar presupuestos, el ecologismo ha pasado a segundo plano. [libre acceso]

U.S. researchers have developed a formula that can predict whether fertility treatment will succeed more accurately than using age alone, and used it to develop a commercial test. (Reuters)

Some doctors are taking an unusual new approach to communicate better with patients—they are letting them read the notes that physicians normally share only with each other. (Wall Street Journal)

With more than two billion people online across the globe, including 80% of the US population, most of us are surfing, emailing or Skyping at all hours of the day. But does using the internet fundamentally change the way we think? (BBC News)

More than half of clinical trial subjects and sites for drugs and biologics were located outside the United States in fiscal 2008, a new study said. And 80% of the drug and biologic marketing applications that the Food and Drug Administration approved contained foreign clinical trial data. (American Medical News)

Authors such as Francis Fukuyama, the President’s Council on Bioethics, and George Annas have argued that biotechnological interventions that aim to promote genetic enhancement pose a threat to human nature. This paper clarifies what conclusions these critics seek to establish, and then shows that there is no plausible account of human nature that will meet the conditions necessary to support this position. Appeals to human nature cannot establish a prohibition against the pursuit of genetic enhancement. [Abstract (Journal of Medicine and Philosophy)]

Potent stem cells derived from reprogramming skin or other adult body tissues may have limits on their usefulness as an alternative to cells from human embryos, researchers said. (BusinessWeek)

Kalkwarf is one of many children of the 5.3 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the United States who face the terrifying possibility of inheriting a predisposition to the disease. Now that there are tests in the works for early detection of brain injury due to Alzheimer’s, as well as other biological markers of the disease, the question becomes: Would you want to know? (CNN)

Los jóvenes asumen comportamientos sexuales más seguros, y eso les convierte en los principales abanderados de la lucha contra el sida, según muestra un informe oficial recién publicado.

A federal advisory committee voted narrowly against endorsing a drug vying to become the first new prescription medicine for obesity in more than a decade, signaling heightened concerns for possible health risks associated with a new generation of diet pills. (New York Times)

One woman panicked when the genetic test she had ordered over the Internet concluded that her son was carrying a life-threatening disorder and, even more disturbing, that he was not — genetically — her son. Another, who always thought she was white, was flabbergasted to find her genes were mostly of African origin. A third woman’s result was still more stunning: She was a man, it said. (Washington Post)

Question of whether eggs should be harvested from woman on life support plunges specialists into tough terrain. (The Boston Globe)

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

This was absolutely predictable: When the public prosecutor for England and Wales said he would not prosecute some assisted suicides if based on compassionate motives, I warned that it would open the dikes. And now, here it comes. A man with quadriplegia is seeking a court order allowing his wife to give him a lethal injection–clearly, murder–and not face prosecution. From the story:

A man with “locked-in syndrome” has begun legal action, asking the director of public prosecutions to clarify the law on so-called mercy killing. Tony Nicklinson, 56, wants his wife to be allowed to help him die without the risk of being prosecuted for murder. Mr Nicklinson, of Chippenham, Wiltshire, communicates by blinking or nodding his head at letters on a board. His lawyers say he is “fed up with life” and does not wish to spend the next 20 years in this condition. According to his legal team, his only lawful means of ending his life is by starvation – refusing food and liquids. His wife Jane says she is prepared to inject him with a lethal dose of drugs, but this would leave her liable to be charged with murder

This is the logical consequence of appeasing euthanasia/assisted suicide advocacy: It makes people think there is a right to suicide, when there is no such thing. And note–the wife isn’t a doctor, proving, once again, that euthanasia isn’t a medical act. The story points out that a recent jury refusal to convict a mother who committed homicide of her disabled daughter, which also adds to the impetus of this case:

Such cases end up before a jury. In January Kay Gilderdale was cleared of attempted murder after she admitted helping her disabled daughter to die. In that case her daughter Lynn had attempted suicide.

No wonder the disability rights community see themselves as the targets of euthanasia advocacy–they are. What else are they to think when prosecutors and the public agree with despairing disabled people that their lives are not worth living. (We saw the same phenomenon in the Kevorkian acquittals, which so alarmed leaders of the disability rights community that it led to the formation of Not Dead Yet.

What if I were grown only so that my organs could be harvested, and I had to care for others whose organs are being taken, too, while I wait for my own death? What if doctors cut off a piece of the tumor that killed me and grew it in a lab for the next sixty years? What if scientists discovered a gene that would ensure my happiness no matter what life throws at me? (PhysOrg)

Un caso sorprendente en el Reino Unido. Un parpadeo le salvó de la muerte en el último momento. El británico Richard Rudd está en coma tras un accidente de moto hace un año. Richard trabajaba como conductor de autoescuela hasta el 23 de octubre del pasado año, cuando un coche lo arrolló a la salida de una gasolinera y lo expulsó a seis metros de su motocicleta. La caída lo convirtió en una

F.D.A. votes against an "obesity drug" due to concerns of potential dangerous side effects.

New criteria could lead to earlier Alzheimer diagnoses which leaves at-risk family members questioning if they want to know their risk.

Genetic engineering, increased understanding of the immune system and new immunization delivery technologies could make this century the golden age of vaccines, observers say.

Question of whether eggs should be harvested from woman on life support plunges specialists into tough terrain.

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

By rejecting human exceptionalism, modern bioethics threatens to destroy human equality and expose the defenseless to killing and exploitation. Take infanticide, which Peter Singer–among others–asserts should be permitted if the baby does not meet the utilitarian interests of the family. And indeed, in the Netherlands and Flanders, studies show infanticide is ongoing–based on compaaasssssssion, of course.

Infanticide is nothing new. The Romans exposed disabled babies on hills and murdered unwanted infants. More proof of this was recently uncovered in the UK, where a mass grave of murdered infants from the Roman times was uncovered. From the story:

An extensive study of a mass burial at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley suggests that the 97 children all died at 40 weeks gestation, or very soon after birth. The archaeologists believe that locals may have been killing and burying unwanted babies on the site in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire. Unwanted pregnancies were common in Roman brothels due to little contraception and Romans also considered infanticide less shocking than it is today.Infants were not considered to be human beings until about the age of two and were not buried in cemeteries if they were younger than that.

Peter Singer has asserted that an infant is not a “person” until about 1 year of age, which, if adapted as a policy by society, would deny infants and babies the right to life. And this is considered a modern, forward looking view.

And the moral of the story? Rejecting human exceptionalism would lead directly to a return of barbaric practices and beleifs that the West rejected long ago as brutal and unenlighted. Or, to paraphrase the old song, everything old is threatening to be new again.

HT: Bioedge

What do we, as a society, owe to the resulting children, especially when we are complicit in their coming into being, by approving and funding the technologies used to create them? They are the people most profoundly and directly affected. They will live their lives as “donor-conceived adults,” “genetic orphans,” as many of them call themselves. (THE MARK)

Acabo de terminar un libro, que me parece muy sugerente: El maestro de almas, está escrito de una forma que sólo una mujer podría haberlo hecho. La autora es Irene Némirovsky, judia francesa, que falleció en Auswitch en 1942. El argumento es original: médico extranjero que tiene que buscarse la vida en Francia, dificultades, recursos que utiliza.Psicoanálisis como telón de fondo; aventuras

Doctors in Korea can remove life support if a terminally-ill patient wishes to die.

Government experts and a panel of medical advisers repeatedly voiced skepticism on Tuesday about the trustworthiness of GlaxoSmithKline, which makes the controversial diabetes drug Avandia.

A survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that workplace monitoring of impaired or incompetent physicians is not what you'd call common.

The UK has one of the best systems for end of life care, a global study says. The analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit looked at access to services, quality of care and public awareness in 40 countries. It found the UK performed particularly well on issues such as obtaining pain killers and quality of support. (BBC News)

Pro-life groups and other critics who are worried about the specter of health-care rationing attacked the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor and pediatrician who was sworn in this week as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services.

While Berwick’s crusade to improve hospital services has earned national recognition, his past statements of support for health-care rationing and Britain’s government-run system have sparked controversy. (NC Register)

Two non-governmental organisations asked the government to prioritise the protection of people’s health and the prevention of diseases that lead to organ failure instead of promoting the Philippines as an area for organ transplant. (Gulf News)