23andMe: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Blog / /
Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Emerita Trinity International University

23andMe is a leading provider of personalized genetic testing (screen shot of product above). For $229 and a test tube of spit, anyone can have their DNA analyzed and receive direct reports on their ancestry, genetic traits, health risks and pre-dispositions, carrier risks and more. Consumers are also invited to share their genetic information with relatives and healthcare professionals and they can choose to have their “de-identified” data shared with pharmaceutical and medical research companies for the development of new drugs and treatments. About 80% of consumers agree to share their personal ...read more

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Open Letter to Health Care Professionals: We Have a Problem

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

To Health Care Professionals: We have a problem. Our health care systems typically have multiple levels of health care \”providers\” who see and treat patients with or without physician input or oversight. The interposition of electronic medical records and automated systems add another layer of complexity to the health care arena. Young trainees — medical students and others — have, due to various pandemic policies, been \”trained\” online. The distance between health care professional and patient has increased by many of these factors. The problem we health care professionals have is with the second word ...read more

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Surgical Castration Decision by Surrogates

Blog / /

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

After evaluating the situation and weighing the options for months, my husband and I took our two-year-old Golden Retriever to the veterinarian for surgery. “Rudy” has been with us for two years, and is fully grown. He is a loving dog, who is obsessed with playing ball in the backyard – between petting sessions, of course. He has marked his territory in the great outdoors for more than a year; of late, he has decided to claim some of the indoor space as well. That is a no-no: something we will not tolerate.

Nonetheless, we both ...read more

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Subsidizing Desire

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

Philosophy Professor Timothy F. Murphy and medical student Kelsey Mumford recently published in the AMA Journal of Ethics a paper on the possibility of subsidizing uterine transplantation — for transwomen (biological males) and transmen (biological females).

The authors posit that government subsidy for expensive uterine transplants could apply to a number of persons identifying as

Transwomen “who want to gestate their own children” Transwomen who don’t want to gestate children but want a uterus “to consolidate their identities” Transmen “who want to gestate their own children” Males (“cisgender men”) who want to “gestate children of their own”

The authors raise the ...read more

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My Life, My Death, My Choice … or NOT

Blog, Other Voices / /

 

Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Emerita Trinity International University

As we emerge from the shadow of a worldwide pandemic that forced society to seek safety in unprecedented government control, we are finding that governments are now unwilling to hand back the reins to the populace. New laws, hastily passed, are designed to limit individual freedoms and solidify the power of policy makers over our lives. Frequently, we are told that these laws are for own good and/or the good of our society. Those who disagree are often marginalized, cancelled, or even arrested, accused of obstructing needed liberal social change. Hard earned ...read more

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The Written Word

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What We\’re Reading

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture

 

\”A Call to Christian Academics Regarding Medical and Technological Ethics.\”

Larry Locke is a Professor and Associate Dean of the McLane College of Business at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and a Research Fellow of LCC International University. This insightful essay issues a call for Christian academics to invest themselves in the medical ethical questions of today. “Now is the time,” he concludes, “for Christian academics and Christian ethicists to apply themselves and all their skill to these and other looming questions. Our generation has been gifted with an ...read more

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Worth Your Time: Selections from the Bioethics Library

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C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture

 

Adam Kirsch, The Revolt Against Humanity: Imaging a Future Without Us (Columbia Global Reports, 2023)

In this dystopian non-fiction work, Kirsch, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, claims that the future will be better off without human beings. As he puts it in the introduction, “the premise of the book is that the revolt against humanity is a real and significant phenomenon even if it is “just” an idea, and its predictions of a future without us never comes true.” The revolt against humanity is, as he puts it, “a spiritual ...read more

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WHO\’s in Charge? WHAt\’s in Store?

Blog, Medicine & Health, WHO / /
by D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.

Executive Director

The World Health Organization (WHO), through the governing World Health Assembly (WHA) has proposed changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR) that eliminate human dignity, human rights, and freedoms of persons. The Article by Article Compilation of Proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) submitted by States Parties in the context of Decision WHA75(9)2 shows the changes, noted by strikethroughs, underlining, and bold text. A strikethrough deletes existing text, and proposed new text is underlined and in bold font. Many changes are afoot. Only a few are considered here.

One change to Article 1 of the document (see NOTE 1 below) ...read more

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Worth Your Time: Selections from the Bioethics Library

Blog, C. Ben Mitchell / /

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture

 

The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession by Farr Curlin, MD and Christopher Tollefsen

Written by a palliative care physician/ethicist and a philosopher, The Way of Medicine is both diagnostic and prescriptive. Curlin and Tollefsen begin by showing readers why medicine is in crisis. At the heart of the crisis is the “provider of services model” (PSM) as the role of the physician which has not only eroded the profession qua a profession, but has helped to make medicine just another consumer good. Physicians are merely providers and patients ...read more

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Editing Our Future

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Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Emerita Trinity International University

The recent (March 6-8, 2023) meeting of the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London has brought ethical concerns about heritable human genome editing to the forefront once again. Recall that the previous meeting five years ago exploded into international furor over revelations from He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who edited the genomes of three embryos and brought them to term. He was jailed for his actions in China and was only recently released. Apparently, he is unrepentant and still harboring visions of reactivating his genome editing pursuits. Not surprisingly, ...read more

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