The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No Carl Elliott (Norton, $39.99, 355 pages) Medical ethics professor Carl Elliott’s The Occasional Human Sacrifice is unlikely to engender greater trust in the medical profession as it explores six controversial cases in which medical researchers treated human beings as guinea pigs. Often the patients consented to the interventions, albeit without [...]
On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service Anthony Fauci, M.D. (Viking, $48, 464 pages) The autobiography of Anthony Fauci, the public face of both the Trump and Biden White House responses to COVID, provides plenty of fodder for both fans and critics of Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. The books’ errors of fact and evasion of controversies might be forgivable but [...]
Joanna Alphonso: Often claiming to be as essential as penicillin, the pro-abortion movement claims to be an evidence-based and medically necessary treatment. A US-based study published on June 30, 2024 in the Medical Research Archives by the European Society of Medicine revealed insufficient data in abortion-related studies, thereby calling into question the medical basis for pro-abortion policy. Researchers James Studnicki, ScD, and [...]
Rory Leishman: According to the latest, most reliable information on COVID 19 vaccines, are they ethical? Have they really been a safe and effective means of drastically reducing hospitalizations and deaths due to the COVID-19 virus? Consider, first, the ongoing controversy over the ethics of the Moderna and Pfizer-BionTech mRNA vaccines. Some well-meaning, but misguided, pro-lifers maintain that no one in good [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Houston, you have a problem. This past May, one of your own, “strongly pro-life” Texas senators Ted Cruz (R) co-sponsored a bill to protect access to IVF. Actually, Houston, we have a lot of problems, because Cruz is far from the only big “pro-life” name to come out in support of in [...]
Leire Douros: Tracy Polewczuk of Quebec was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that causes weak bones. Recently she told CTV that twice she was told of her eligibility to be euthanized despite not initiating the topic herself. Several years ago, Polewczuk suffered an accident which caused her leg to break. She hasn’t been able to heal properly which requires her [...]
By J.M. Glover: Dermot Kearney: Pro-life hero Dr. Dermot Kearney, a British Catholic cardiologist who spoke at the National March for Life in May, has been honoured for his work on the medical abortion pill reversal (APR). (See The Interim, June 2024.) In April, he received the Anton Neuwirth Prize for the Protection of Life Award in Slovakia “for providing medical care [...]
Paul Tuns: A short, animated video, “It’s OK,” created by Choice42 shows how preborn victims of abortion are used to create fetal cell lines used in the medical and cosmetics industries. The 4:39 video, which can be viewed for free at Choice42’s website or on YouTube, starts with doctors taking tissue from “Ellie” a baby killed through abortion more than 60 years [...]
Joanna Alphonso: Treatments for anti-aging, psoriasis, and eczema may be tainted by the use of fetal tissue originating from aborted babies. Human Life International (HLI) produced Which Cosmetics Use Fetal Cells, a free e-book outlining the use of fetal cells in cosmetics. According to their United States-based research, they have not found any companies that use fetal cells in their products. They [...]
Home Hospice Association prenatal and perinatal hospice with services available in cities including Cambridge, Guelph, Hamilton-Halton, Kitchener, Niagara, Ottawa, Toronto. Alberta Calgary: Alberta Children's Hospital Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Service, also accepting referrals for perinatal hospice. Contact: Clinical nurse specialist Kathryn da Silva, (403) 955-5460. Calgary Family Physician Navigator program, accepting referrals (from physicians or self-referrals) for family physician support to [...]
Joanna Alphonso: If choosing death for one’s child is health care, choosing life for that same child must also be health care. But how accessible is the health care choice for life for women when facing a prenatal diagnosis of severe illness and likely death shortly after birth? Palliative care, according to SickKids Hospital in Toronto, expands beyond end-of-life care, as many [...]
By J.M. Glover: Brain Death: a moral dilemma The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) located near Philadelphia, is warning about changing the concept of brain death. In 2023, it raised the alarm that a redefinition of brain death could allow for the death of a person still partially alive: “a whole brain death standard has appeared to be compatible with Catholic teaching.” [...]
Paul Tuns: Liberal MLA Keith Irving (Kings South) introduced Bill 440, which, if passed, would provide evidence-based data about Down syndrome to parents informed of a prenatal diagnosis of the chromosomal anomaly. A law respecting Down syndrome, or so-called Harvey’s Law, would require medical staff to provide up-to-date and evidence-based information on Down Syndrome, including data about life expectancy, education and psychosocial [...]
Paul Tuns: According to an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), the federal pharmacare plan that will cover diabetes care and contraception is estimated to cost $5.7 billion while recouping $3.8 billion from public and private drug plans, for a total cost to taxpayers of $1.9 billion over the next half-decade. Health Minister Mark Holland tabled legislation delivering the first phase [...]
Some rhythms and patterns are so regular that their interruption is all but almost impossible to imagine—the sun rises in the east, the seasons change, and life unfolds against a settled horizon of expectations. Indeed, the deep grooves of these established pattens are the very contours that constitute “normal life,” and their cessation has the character of a cataclysm. When sudden emergencies—like [...]