Please click an article title below to read more.

Bringing Light to a Culture of Death

April 29, 2024 • Posted in Blog

 

by Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D.

Professor of Biology Emerita

Trinity International University

In contemporary western culture, autonomy (self will, personal choice) is the supreme value. This value is no better exemplified than in the promotion of self-controlled death through legalization of physician assisted suicide. Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) means a physician provides a patient-requested lethal medication that their patient can then use to end his or her life. Most recently, we have witnessed the legalization of PAS, also termed Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), to ever ballooning proportions in Canada and now in a growing number of U.S. states. Committing suicide is legal ...read more

My Life, My Death, My Choice … or NOT

July 26, 2023 • Posted in Blog

 

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

Informed Consent: A Hazy Concept

July 22, 2022 • Posted in Blog

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

We’re all too familiar with those awkward television commercials for drugs whose names cannot be pronounced because they have too many consonants. To be fair, drug manufacturers have run out of eloquent ways to combine the letters of the alphabet, so they just string them together as best they can. But beyond the alphabet soup, the television voice recites a sometimes-arresting list of possible complications of taking the drug: dizziness, insomnia, tiredness—or the even more arresting—intense sexual or gambling urges and explosive diarrhea, which hopefully do not occur simultaneously! The ...read more

Focusing on “Culture”

July 27, 2020 • Posted in Blog

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

The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture exists to promote human dignity in the face of 21st Century bioethics challenges. Our theme for 2020 is Human Flourishing. Living in the surreal time of a pandemic with all the increased complexity of our lives, flourishing can almost seem too high an ideal. Artist Carol Harkness penned the following essay (lightly edited) about the important building blocks of culture—integrally related to flourishing—and that not only for our day.

We are still busy with bioethics as well. Here are a few recent articles you may want to check out:

“Dying ...read more

Life Without Us?

November 2, 2019 • Posted in Blog

By Jane Patton, Guest Columnist

It is not new that some people say that they do not want to bring children into the world. And, as far as the do’s and don’ts of being environmentally responsible, the carbon footprint of a single human being tops the list of avoidable behaviors. One presidential candidate even advocates abortion as a way to combat climate change. So, it may be okay to have one or two children. Any more than that and parents might be called selfish.

But, a growing movement is taking the idea of limiting births to the next level—preventing all births. Who ...read more

Shift and Puzzle: What do an ape and a donkey have to do with bioethics?

January 31, 2019 • Posted in Blog

Unmasking the Cultural Lies, One at a Time

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

In C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, Shift is a shrewd, crafty ape, and his neighbor, Puzzle, is a meek, somewhat simple donkey. It has been a long time since Aslan, the all-powerful lion, has been seen in Narnia. Therefore, when Shift spies an old lion skin, he decides to have Puzzle dress up in it and pretend to be Aslan. Shift constantly insists that Puzzle do all the heavy-lifting involved in any of their escapades, but in such a way that Puzzle thinks he is getting the ...read more

What if we call it “Medical Aid in Dying”?

October 31, 2018 • Posted in Blog

 

A Lesson from History

In the aftermath of WWII, Leo Alexander penned the following as part of an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine:

The Example of Successful Resistance by the Physicians of the Netherlands There is no doubt that in Germany itself the first and most effective step of propaganda within the medical profession was the propaganda barrage against the useless, incurably sick described above. Similar, even more subtle efforts were made in some of the occupied countries. It is to the everlasting honor of the medical profession of Holland that they recognized the earliest and most subtle ...read more

Helping Patients Live vs. Helping Them Die

June 6, 2017 • Posted in Blog

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

Cultural Suicide On Sunday, 28 May 2017, The Tennessean published a full page set of articles on the problem of suicide amongst the armed forces in our nation. The year 2012 saw a peak of 22 U.S. veterans killing themselves per day (Jake Lowary, “‘I can’t do barbecues:’ Veteran says“). The Department of Veterans Affairs plans a 7.5 percent budget increase to $186.1 million in 2018 — all to address suicide prevention, the department’s “highest clinical priority” (Jake Lowary, “Suicide rising in the military, but some programs give veterans hope“).

In light of these sobering statistics, it ...read more

Morphing and Transforming: The Physician-Assisted Suicide Debate

May 31, 2016 • Posted in Blog

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

For years, Jack Kevorkian was synonymous with assisted suicide. Seeing patients after death was not sufficient for the pathologist; he wanted to help them to that state. Kevorkian’s first kit was made from flea-market items. That was 1989; the euthanasia group at that time was called “The Hemlock Society.”

Kevorkian lived in Michigan; ironically, his first subject, Janet Adkins, traveled from Portland, Oregon, in 1990 to use Kevorkian’s machine in his parked van. He started her i.v., but she had to activate the machine to administer the lethal substances.

Kevorkian went to prison for his illegal activities, ...read more

Taking stock: Where are we now?

January 30, 2016 • Posted in Blog

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

Taking stock of where one is at the beginning of a new project or a new year is a good idea. Where we are in the entire realm of bioethics is beyond the scope of one blog post, but what follows are some landmarks discernible in January 2016…

Physician-Assisted Suicide

On Sunday, 24 January, John Jay Hooker, Tennessee lawyer, politician, and activist, died. Mr. Hooker had most recently championed “death with dignity” — physician-assisted suicide — in a proposed bill and in the courts. By the time of his death, neither the legislature nor the courts had provided ...read more