Tag: medical ethics

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Eridemus
By Eridemus
Eridemus Coolidge
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13 COMMENTS
 

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20190311/43a11e2b-770e-423a-855c-ec513348ac1b Please especially read the part about 16-year-old Connor Thonen-Fleck towards the end, seeking insurance coverage to give “him” a “more typically male chest,” which is to say not an inborn healthy female chest – as if gender reassignment by the body owner’s brain makes it real in every way, thereby a guide to surgery. Whereas […]

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Doug Watt
By Doug Watt
Doug Watt Moderator
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0 COMMENTS
 

This essay is a reprint from Pilgrims Path. Pilgrims Path was a blog I started writing in 2011. I thought I would reprint this essay I originally wrote in 2012, and published on Ricochet in December 2015. Infanticide has now become fashionable in 2019. Six years have passed since I wrote this essay. All change […]

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Transgender Man’s Pregnancy Roils Family Members

Susan Quinn
By Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn Contributor
Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator
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259 COMMENTS
 

The title above was not a headline in the National Enquirer; it was the title of an Ask Amy column, from March 9. In reading the column I shifted between shock and confusion; the letter writer was in distress because her son’s decision to become pregnant as a transgender male had created a rupture in her family that she didn’t know to heal.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I know that gender and sexual identities have been tampered with and distorted for many years, but I wondered: how in the world does a transgender man become pregnant, and more importantly, how does this kind of insanity take place in today’s society?

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Why Can’t We Make Better Painkillers?

Claire Berlinski, Ed.
By Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Claire Berlinski, Ed. Editor
Since earning her doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, Claire Berlinski has lived and worked in Britain, Thailand, Laos, Turkey and now France as a journalist, academic, editor, translator and freelance writer. She is the author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too and There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. She has also written two spy novels. Her writing has been published in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Th… [more]
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100 COMMENTS
 

painkillerI asked this question on Fred’s post about the problems his family’s had filling his mom’s prescriptions for painkillers — medication she needs to treat the pain of advanced lung cancer. Moments after asking it, I began thinking, “Hey, wait — that’s a good question.”

Or maybe it isn’t, but I figured there could be no harm asking, because I bet I’m not the only one to wonder.

Why is it that the only really effective painkillers we seem to have are highly addictive and dangerous drugs that addicts love? The point of a painkiller is to make the pain go away, not to get you high, so why do we not yet have a class of drugs that only do the former? Or, to wit: We already do have many of them, such as aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen. And those are great, effective drugs, as anyone who’s had a headache or a sprained ankle knows. But apparently, they’re not effective enough to treat more serious pain.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. The Ethical Dilemma

EJHillJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member
By EJHill
EJHill Podcaster
Thirty years in television production. Living in a midwestern city in the productive custody of his wife and four children (Baby Girl, Marine, Future Tony Winner & Xerox). Unrelenting, unrepentant conservative. Needs a better temperament that equals his photoshop skills. Will probably die broke but believes more in freedom than the welfare state.  
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44 COMMENTS
 

shutterstock_68073163The folks at Planned Parenthood and its defenders are trying to mitigate their public relations nightmare by reminding us that fetal tissue played a vital role in the development of vaccines, including polio. Their main points are:

  • We are doing vital work in saving lives.
  • If you received the vaccination and you don’t have polio you are already an accomplice, so get over it.

Where then, do you draw the line?

Most of us received the vaccine as a matter of course, before we were old enough to understand the concept of the ethical dilemma. But we surely could have understood when we had our own children vaccinated; that is, if we had even known about the history of the research.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. The Unnaturals

Midget Faded Rattlesnake
By Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Midget Faded Rattlesnake Contributor
Bio:  Other rattlesnakes make fun of the Midget Faded Rattlesnake because even though it's a rattlesnake, it's both midget and faded (how embarrassing). Mainly it puts up with this, because it's fairly even-tempered (for a rattlesnake), though it's surprisingly venomous for such an unprepossessing creature. The Midget Faded Rattlesnake hibernates from time to time, but is usually back within a few months.   The M: The M stands for “Moderator”. For more info on what Moderators o… [more]
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109 COMMENTS
 

Blueprint_for_Vetruvian_man_by_ThE_UnKO_LeMaLife has a natural order which must be respected in order to achieve happiness. Most conservatives agree to that. Men and women are naturally different. Children are naturally different from adults. Suffering and death are a natural part of life, and we should be skeptical of any utopian scheme that wishes to circumvent them.

I concede all that. Yet in conceding that, I cannot help but conclude that my own existence is deeply unnatural. Let me explain.

Without the intervention of modern medicine, I would have died several times over in childhood. If you asked me whether Mother Nature intended me to be alive, the only reasonable answer I could come up with is “No”. Moreover, I’m a third-generation unnatural: the child of a child who would have died in childhood without heroic medical intervention. I married a man who has robust good health, but it’s likely that our children (should we manage to have any) will be fourth-generation unnaturals.

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