Don’t Ignore What an Embryo Is

Stem Cell Research / /

Originally published by The Tennessean, Invited Opinion, 12/31/2008 (used by permission)

Change is today’s political buzzword.  President-elect Obama has promised lots of change.  One change anticipated is an executive order authorizing funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).  Why? Private, state, and limited federal monies are already being used.  Since the hoped-for cures have not materialized, more is demanded: more money and more embryos.  Looking to the deep pockets of the NIH for a decade, embryonic stem cell researchers, joined by various celebrities, continue to extend their hands for additional tax-dollars

Embryonic stem cell research has been going on for a long time.  I attended a “25 Years of ...read more

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Transplantation Ethics

Book Reviews / /

As professor of medical ethics at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Robert M. Veatch is an able dissector of the ethical principles involved in the arena of human organ transplantation.  As a member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Ethics Committee, and formerly chair of its Organ Allocation Subcommittee, Veatch has practical experience with many of the issues involved in the distribution of organs for transplantation.  As chair of a local Organ-Procurement Organization (OPO) Task Force on Directed Donation, he has particular insight into procurement.  While Transplantation Ethics is certainly a reference, it is more an exposition ...read more

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Belmont Revisited: Ethical Principles for Research with Human Subjects

Book Reviews / /

The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was created in 1974 and, after much deliberation (including four days at the Smithsonian Institution’s Belmont Conference Center), released its recommendations in April, 1979. The Belmont Report, after 25 years, is reconsidered in this book by authors prominent in bioethics, economics, law, medicine, medical ethics, philosophy, public health, public policy, and sociology. Three of these authors — Albert R. Jonsen, Patricia King, and Karen Lebacqz — served as members of the National Commission, while Tom L. Beauchamp was assigned the task of writing the original document.

The ...read more

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Fifty Years After the Declaration: The United Nations’ Record on Human Rights

Book Reviews / /

With the recently approved Human Rights Council replacing the widely discredited United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, Fifty Years After the Declaration:  The United Nations’ Record on Human Rights is a timely and, indeed, a necessary read.  Whatever one’s interpretation of the United Nations’ beginnings, history, or current functioning, a retrospective consideration of that body’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published in 1948, is a task worthy of the time required to digest this short work.

Having experienced two world wars in little more than thirty years’ time, those who composed the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 were ...read more

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Identity is in the details

Genomic & Genetics Issues / /

D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.

Executive Director

June 2009

Privacy and research are two major concerns in discussions of biobanks.  They are important in another arena as well.  Whenever we are patients in a medical office or a hospital, medical records are created.  Whenever we have blood, other body fluids, or tissue taken, the remnants after testing are usually stored.   Neither of these facts constitutes news.   Novel uses of such information and samples, however, is a newsworthy subject, even if it is seldom read in the popular press.

In 1996, the US Congress made a law, the goal of which was to protect ...read more

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