Monday, April 29, 2013

Still smiling

Sandel's parting contention: life is one thing and personhood another, but it’s best not so to obsess over the ethical boundary between them that we relinquish our one living opportunity to improve the human estate. 
Genetic engineering to create designer babies is the ultimate expression of the hubris that marks the loss of reverence for life as a gift. But stem cell research to cure debilitating disease, using unimplanted blastocysts, is a noble exercise of our human ingenuity to promote healing and to play our part in repairing the given world.
We end with Generosity, and the character nicknamed “Generosity.” Thassa constantly channels Richard Dawkins sans hubris (one reason why Powers and I love her): “we are the lucky ones”...

Continues at Up@dawn | reflections caught at daybreak
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Please post your thoughts on our guest essay, "Questioning the Ethics of Cosmetic Genetic Modification"...
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Also of interest:

"Angel of Death" (60 Minutes)-Charles Cullen was a critical care nurse who admits to killing up to 40 people. Some suspect it was a lot more. The murders took place over 16 years in seven different hospitals. There were suspicions at nearly all of them that Cullen was harming patients, yet none of them passed that information on to subsequent employers. Newspaper headlines called him "The Angel of Death," but as you will see, Charles Cullen was no mercy killer...


Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit

Could what looks like A.D.H.D. be a sleep disorder in disguise? 


The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder

The doctors could address my symptoms. But they didn’t  much care about my vanishing sense of self.

Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer

The battle to raise awareness has been won. So why aren’t more lives being saved?

Variations on a Gene, and Tools to Find Them

Cancers have long been categorized by the tissue where they originate in the body, but new tools and tests are helping doctors tailor treatment to specific gene mutations.

U.S. Sues Novartis Again, Accusing It of Kickbacks

The government joined a whistle-blower lawsuit that said a unit of Novartis paid millions to doctors in exchange for prescribing its drugs.


Why Do I Have Gout?

If you end up with an attack of gout, prepare yourself for a round of blame the victim.

Doctors Denounce Cancer Drug Prices of $100,000 a Year
With the cost of some lifesaving cancer drugs exceeding $100,000 a year, more than 100 influential cancer specialists from around the world have taken the unusual step of banding together in hopes of persuading some leading pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down.


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