Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 024: Debating the Embryo’s Fate

As I watched him, the rhetorical thought flashed through my mind, patterned on the language of embryonic stem cell advocates: ‘…he’s so small, so insignificant: what if a cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes could be developed to benefit all of suffering mankind, by promoting scientific research that depended on killing just a single little boy like him.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 023: Acorns and Embryos

The key flaw in Dr. Sandel’s argument is the claim that acorns are potential oaks, when in fact, they are not potential oaks, but actual oaks (at an early stage).

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationMay 30, 2007Embryos

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 022: Recapturing the Soul of Bioethics

…women (and men) should never be paid for their eggs (or sperm), as we insist they not be paid for organ donations. This is done to prevent the human body from becoming “commodified” by powerful economic and market forces, and to stave off the prospect of trafficking in human parts.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 021: Thinking About Sex and Marital Surrender

The inner structure of human sexuality thus includes this central and discernible meaning: that the root origin of new human life is meant to ultimately lie beyond our own direct determination...

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 020: Should I Have a Living Will?

Better than a living will, or at least together with it, we should always choose a surrogate, a living person, who will make health care decisions in real time on our behalf if we are rendered unable to do so.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 019: Sexual Assault and Abortion

In tragic situations like sexual assault, it can be enormously difficult to perceive the right lines, and to think with reason rather than emotions.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJanuary 30, 2007Sexual Assault, Abortion

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 018: Are Feeding Tubes Required?

The answer always depends on the particulars of a patient’s situation, but there are a few broad considerations that can help in the discernment process.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 017: Bodies in Plastic

... some people find the exhibit ‘edgy’, causing more than a tinge of discomfort, and they wonder whether there aren’t ethical concerns associated with putting the human body on display in this way.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 016: “Animal Rights” vs. Human Rights

...concern for exercising proper stewardship over animals ought to be a balanced part of a broader concern to avoid exploiting the vulnerable, wherever they are encountered.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 015: Guilt-Free Pluripotent Stem Cells?

While the quest for 'guilt-free stem cells' is certainly a good one, the so-called 'embryo biopsy' approach to generating embryonic stem cells fails to deliver...

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationSeptember 30, 2006Embryos, Stem Cell Research

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 014: Temptations in Prenatal Testing

Those families that manifest an openness and receptivity to every child God sends them, regardless of their imperfections and ailments, provide a compelling witness in our troubled times.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 013: Thawing the Frozen Embryo Myths

...parents must be especially attentive to never hand over their embryonic children who are still frozen to researchers eager to extract their stem cells.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 012: Conundrum with Condoms

Indeed, true love is violated right at its core in marriage any time we choose to use condoms, even for ‘good reasons.’

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 011: Fetal Farming and the New Slavery

In today’s society we almost nonchalantly sanction the production of a five day-old human life to destroy it. Tomorrow it may be a three month-old, then an eight-month old fetus.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 010: Sperm for Sale

Our gametes, and their exclusive availability to our spouse through marital acts, manifest this beautiful and life-engendering possibility of giving ourselves away to the one person whom we singularly love.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 009: “No Tubes for Me”

In order to decide whether a treatment is ordinary, we must also look at the patient’s condition and circumstances, and not merely focus on the treatment, the medical device, or the medicine itself.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 008: Theology, or Embryology?

Science, quite apart from religious dogma, affirms dogmatically that every person walking around in the world was once an embryo. This absolute scientific dogma admits of no exceptions.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 007: Good Ends, Evil Means & Fraudulent Science

Given the enormous pot of glory perceived by scientists at the end of that rainbow, researchers in their frantic rush hardly paused to catch their breath and consider the deeper questions raised by this technology.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 006: Babies in Test Tubes

IVF violates this design by replacing that love-giving act with an act of production, whereby we manufacture our own children in petri dishes and test tubes, as if they were products or objects to be manhandled at will.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 005: Brain Dead Means Dead

...whenever somebody is in fact brain dead, they are dead, and we do not have an obligation to “keep them going.” All machines can be turned off at any time after the declaration of brain death, because brain-dead individuals are, in fact, corpses, not patients. This is the harsh reality.

“Making Sense of Bioethics” CMS