A Time to Embrace and a Time to Refrain from Embracing — Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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

Executive Director

The day before Thanksgiving, I needed just a few items for the feast preparations. My mother accompanied me to the grocery store, and we, along with a large sector of the local population, searched the shelves. When it was time to check out, I saw the lines peopled by the harassed clerks, and opted for the self check-out region. After scanning a couple of the larger items, I clicked the “Skip Bagging” button on the screen, and placed them back into the cart. Nearing the end of the self check-out level of Purgatory, the machine ...read more

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Making Babies? An IVF Primer

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

Executive Director

The first successful in vitro (in glass) fertilization (IVF) resulted in the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978 in England. Here is a brief account of that event.

Cambridge embryologist Robert Edwards gave a frank interview with The Times‘ reporter Anjana Ahjuga 25 years after the birth of Louise Brown. Edwards said, “The Vatican called Louise’s birth ‘an event that can have very grave consequences for humanity’ because it divorced the conjugal sexual act from procreation.” Edwards is quoted further:

“It was a fantastic achievement but it was about more than infertility,” ...read more

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EctoLife: A Cautionary Tale

Blog, Emerging Technologies, Engineering Humans, Other Voices / /

 

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

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What Say You?

Blog, United States / /

Update: See the bottom of this post for the National Institutes of Health’s response to our letter. 

An Open Letter to Dr. Francis S. Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health

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

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Director National Institutes of Health 9000 Rockville Pike Bethesda, Maryland 20892 [email protected]

17 December 2018

Dear Dr. Collins:

The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture lauds the position of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as evidenced by your concluding statement of 28 November 2018: “NIH does not support the use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos.” As embryonic humans represent the most vulnerable amongst our species, the ...read more

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The Rubicon

Blog, End of Life, Medicine & Health, Resource Room, United States / /

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

The law in the Roman Republic in 49 B.C. was very clear about an army crossing a small stream outside Rome: it was considered an act of war. Julius Caesar knew this, and led his 13th Legion across that stream, declaring, in the historian Suetonius’ words, “The die is cast!” Caesar and his army did not turn back, but continued on to war, and ultimately defeated Pompey the Great. This turning point in history is referenced whenever we talk about approaching a point of no return and utter the phrase, “crossing the Rubicon.”

“The Rubicon” sculpture ...read more

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Knowing How to Treat Something Requires Knowing What It Is

Blog, United Kingdom / /

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

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Response to NYT Magazine Journalist Kim Tingley

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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

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Public Comment before the FDA Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee, 25 February 2014

Blog, Engineering Humans, Resource Room, United States / /

Good afternoon, Members of the Advisory Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I am Dr. D. Joy Riley, the executive director of The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture, an educational not-for-profit organization headquartered in Nashville, TN, dedicated to promoting human dignity in the face of challenges to what it means to be human, and to informing and equipping people to face the vital bioethics issues of the 21st Century.

I am a physician by training, and hold a graduate degree in bioethics as well. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today.  I have no conflicts of interest to report.

It is remarkable ...read more

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