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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 Say You?

December 18, 2018 • Posted in Blog

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

Crossing a Bright Red Line: Human Embryo Editing

November 30, 2018 • Posted in Blog

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

On Monday of this week, He Jiankui of Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, shocked the scientific world prior to the beginning of a conference on gene editing. Dr. He announced a first: that he had edited the genes of embryos for seven couples undergoing fertility treatments, and that one pregnancy has resulted to date. It should be noted that there is no corroboration of this claim currently: it is an announcement; no scientific paper has been published about it.

Some of the specific claims, published in The Guardian, are as follows:

All of ...read more

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

February 25, 2014 • Posted in Blog

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

Stem cells make ‘retina in a dish’ — Nature News

April 12, 2011 • Posted in Asia

By Ewen Callaway

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110406/full/news.2011.215.html

Scottish scientists grow kidneys in a laboratory — Daily Record

April 12, 2011 • Posted in Atlas

By Charlie Gall

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/health-news/2011/04/11/scottish-scientists-grow-kidneys-in-a-laboratory-86908-23053117/

Legal highs: the dark side of medicinal chemistry — naturenews

January 6, 2011 • Posted in Atlas

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/050111/full/469007a.html