What Looks Good to Some, but Soon Takes Over?

Blog / /

D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director

My beloved great-aunt knew the seasons well.  After the advent of Spring, we still had to go through “Blackberry Winter” and a few other cold snaps.  She would be amazed to learn that I find these “Kudzu Days”.  She never celebrated such a time.  After all, kudzu*, which grew behind her home, is a non-native woody vine planted all over the Southeast by F.D.R.’s Civilian Conservation Corps.  Later it was designated a pest weed.  In 1953, kudzu was removed from the USDA’s list of permissible ground cover, but it has never been eradicated from ...read more

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Is there a difference between therapy and enhancement?

Bioethics 101 / /

Early in this debate, a number of people hoped to find a “bright line” between therapy and enhancement.  Various issues were considered, such as:

— Is reconstructing a breast after cancer surgery the same as gifting your teenage daughter with breast implants? — If you were born with a deformity that has been corrected with prostheses, and those prostheses enable you to run faster than people without them, do you have a therapeutic advantage, or have you been enhanced?  The International Association of Athletics Federations (I.A.A.F.) has dealt with this issue, in the person of Oscar Pistorius (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/p/oscar_pistorius/index.html). — Stimulants often help people ...read more

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Euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide: are these desirable ends?

Bioethics 101 / /

Can a Hippocratic physician assent to P-AS or euthanasia?    The traditional Hippocratic Oath included a pledge that the physician would  “Give no poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor suggest such a plan”.  Is the Hippocratic ethic relevant today?  If so, how?  Some medical schools have re-written the oath, retaining the name for tradition’s sake but leaving out the proscriptions on abortion and euthanasia. If physicians are dually-trained in healing as well as euthanizing, what happens to the patient’s trust when the physician hands him/her a prescription for pain medication?

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