Saturday, April 14, 2018
Mahatma Ghandi reputedly said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” We could paraphrase this in a contemporary context: a nation’s right-to-die laws are measured by how it treats the disabled.
Our lead story this week deals with the euthanasia of patients with an intellectual disability or autism in the Netherlands. Four bioethicists suggest that the necessary safeguards are lacking in these cases.
That is bad enough. But they go on to point out that the disabled have to deal with nigh-intolerable suffering for their whole lives. How does legal euthanasia make them feel? In the words of another author, “If society endorses the right of a person to seek physician assistance to end his or her life because of increasing loss of functional autonomy, what does that say about how our society values the lives of people who live with comparable limitations every day of their lives for years on end?”
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |
NEWS THIS WEEK
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Society needs to be reminded of the transcendent.by Xavier Symons | Apr 14, 2018
Is there something wrong with consensual tongue splitting?by Xavier Symons | Apr 14, 2018
A recent article in the AMA Journal of Ethics says "yes".IN DEPTH THIS WEEK
by Patrick Foong | Apr 14, 2018
The FDA has a real role to play and should not be sidelinedBioEdge
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Wanted: ideologically sound Chinese sperm. Willing to pay top renminbi
by Michael Cook | 14 Apr 2018 |
The sperm bank at Peking University Third Hospital recently placed an advertisement for donors listing these requirements along with freedom from genetic defects like baldness and colour blindness. Successful applicants – only about 19% -- could earn 5,000 renminbi, about US$800, according to an article in the New York Times.
William A. Callahan, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, told the Times that the advertisement reflected the efforts of China’s President Xi Jinping to blend science with ideology.
“Nationalism and socialism are mixing in peculiar ways to promote Chinese identity as a bloodline race,” he said. “The sperm bank announcement shows how the party increasingly dominates Chinese politics, and how nationalism increasingly is defined according to racial purity.”
The ad was mocked on social media and was eventually taken down.
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