Can We Deal with the Truth?
D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director
Two things have happened in recent weeks that should get our attention. Both are truth claims, and come from opposite ends of the cultural and political spectra.
First of all, what is truth? The Free Dictionary is helpful: truth is defined as “Conformity to fact or actuality.” That which conforms to reality is truth. An example often bandied about is my action based on what I believe about gravity. That is, if I believe that the gravitational pull of the earth does not exist (is not true), then I should be able to step out of ...read more
What Does It Take to Alter Our Next Generation?
D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A. Executive Director
I have been thinking about how one generation proactively alters the succeeding one. As I contemplated this conundrum, I found myself writing a story instead of a list. That story was published as a SALVO blog piece, and the link is below. The “angsty” pirate lives in a dystopia created by childhood desire, indulgent parents, a cooperative, complicit medical-industrial complex, and a legal climate in which desire is codified into law. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Click here to read the story. Then, send any comments to us through the Contact Us feature here ...read more
EctoLife: A Cautionary Tale
Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Emerita Trinity International University In the December 2022 TN-CBC newsletter article entitled Déjà vu all over again, D. Joy Riley drew our attention to the parallels between the recently released YouTube video EctoLife: The world’s first artificial womb facility, and the fake publicity for the movie GATTACA 25 years ago. The new video, while actually conceptual, presents ectogenesis, the complete development of a baby in an artificial womb, as a current reality. Once again, a number of viewers were fooled. Unfortunately, it is perhaps more realistic than we dare to think. In a revealing interview by Beau Davidson with the Ectolife ...read more
Knowing How to Treat Something Requires Knowing What It Is
D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.
Here’s a riddle for you: what do you do with the above pictured item? Do you melt it, re-form it, and use it for jewelry? Do you add it to a paint base and cover your walls? Or do you include it in a rice dish and serve it to your family?
Truthfully, you do none of the above. The gold-colored powder pictured above is not real gold; it would not make good jewelry. It is not pigment to add to your wall paint. It is certainly not saffron or curry powder to add to a rice ...read more
Response to NYT Magazine Journalist Kim Tingley
Sowing the Seeds, commissioned work by Carol Harkness for The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture. View the full-size image here.
D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.
In February, The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture made a public comment at an FDA committee hearing. The New York Times Magazine on 27 June published an account of that meeting about three-parent embryos. The author of the article conflates normal human sexual reproduction (i.e., having babies with a chosen partner) with genetic modification. She opines:
What often gets lost in the loaded language of the debate over three-parent babies is the fact that ordinary human reproduction ...read more
Lord Robert Winston’s Fertility Warning — TVNZ ONENEWS
Lord Robert Winston’s TVNZ Breakfast Interview is here.
Selling the Fantasy of Fertility — NYT Opinion
“Selling the Fantasy of Fertility”
By Miriam Zoll and Pamela Tsigdinos
11 September 2013
The Ovolution of the Three-Parent Embryo
Donor treatments for mitochondrial DNA disorders are ethical — Nuffield Council on Bioethics (Press Release)
http://www.phgfoundation.org/news/11991/
