Bioethics

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What is meant by ‘organic farming’? L.W., Toronto This is a development which some scientists see as a part of the ‘Brave New World.’ It is suggested that human beings could be developed for their ‘spare parts’. Women would be paid to have babies which would be aborted in order that they be cannibalized when doctors ‘harvested’ their organs—heart, liver, pancreas, etc. [...]

2009-08-04T13:35:25-04:00February 4, 1991|Abortion, Bioethics, Euthanasia, Pro-Life, Society & Culture|

IVF parents facing the wrong direction

Dr. Donald Demarco presented a brief to the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in Toronto on November 20, 1990. Because of time restrictions on that occasion, he has been given space in The Interim to expand and clarify his remarks to two of the Commissioners, Maureen McTeer and Grace Jantzen. Disease and desire Ms. McTeer stated that one of the chief [...]

2009-07-31T13:19:37-04:00January 31, 1991|Bioethics, Donald DeMarco, Society & Culture|

The day they made me look

For most of the past 15 years, registered nurse Lorraine Keess has worked in the general and pediatric wards of Calgary hospitals.  She is the mother of a boy, nine, and a girl, three, and the wife of a city businessman.  A year ago last month, she took a job in the pathology laboratory of a hospital which performs abortions.  Until then, [...]

2009-08-18T13:25:10-04:00December 18, 1990|Abortion, Bioethics|

Pro-life Conference aims to influence European medical policies

From September 7 to 9, the city of Slavonski Brod, in Croatian Yugoslavia, was the site of a conference on the Future of Medicine in Europe. The goal of this conference was to help shape medical ethics and policy in the emerging countries of Eastern Europe along pro-life and Christian lines. It was attended by several hundred East European doctors, nurses, other [...]

2009-08-18T08:59:53-04:00December 18, 1990|Bioethics|

U.S. Update Fetal experiments halted in Illinois

Attorneys of Chicago’s Pro-Life Action League filed an appeal with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals against an April lower court decision permitting any form of fetal experimentation. Stated League director Joseph Scheidler:  “If this decision were not appealed, Dr. Mengele-type of experimentation on live human subjects would be allowed to be performed on unborn children.  A civilized society cannot allow such [...]

2009-08-14T08:57:05-04:00November 14, 1990|Bioethics|

Gift of life not respected

Test-tube baby clinics in Britain are putting women at risk of having babies born dead or severely handicapped because of the dangers of multiple pregnancies, the London Sunday Times reported on December 10, 1989.  Some centres offering a new technique called FIGT are transferring as many as five or six eggs to a woman to increase her chances of a successful pregnancy.  [...]

2010-06-02T07:23:37-04:00February 2, 1990|Bioethics, Fetal Rights|

Bill to ban human guinea pigs

Early in 1989 the Duke of Norfolk, premier Duke and Earl Marshall of England, introduced a bill in Parliament which would outlaw the use of human embryos as guinea pigs for experimentation and vivisection. The Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Lords in March 1989. The Glover Report During the debate Lord Henley, saying that he spoke for the [...]

2009-07-29T12:44:59-04:00January 29, 1990|Bioethics|

Euthanasia: withdrawing the staff of life

As we saw in our last article, food and water are being routinely withheld from seriously ill patients – not all of them terminally ill – in Canadian hospitals. Is this right? Can withdrawing nutrition (or failing to initiate it) ever be justified? There are two major schools of thought on this matter, and two minor ones. To take the major ones [...]

2009-07-29T12:43:33-04:00January 29, 1990|Bioethics|

Giving away in-vitro babies

Many years ago there was a cartoon which showed a small boy looking at newly-born twins, and asking his father, “Which one are we going to keep?” At that time the cartoon was amusing. Today, in the Brave New World of 1989, it is not so funny. A recent report from Perth, Australia, says that a mother who gave birth to quads [...]

2009-08-27T11:37:37-04:00December 27, 1989|Bioethics|

Unborn babies for transplants Is it ethical?

Time magazine for April 3, 1989, carried an account of a historic fetal-cell transplant which may have saved a boy’s life.  Soon after their first child died of a rare form of immune deficiency, a French couple learned that their second baby, due in August, 1988, was suffering from the same condition.  Without publicity, two doctors in Lyons transplanted cells from two [...]

2009-08-27T08:56:36-04:00November 27, 1989|Bioethics|

CMA deceives

Physicians for life has indicted the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) for consistently misrepresenting the true beliefs of Canada’s doctors with respect to abortion. Dr. Ranalli On August 21, Physicians for Life mounted a press conference simultaneously in eleven cities across Canada. In Toronto, Dr. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at York Finch General Hospital and president of that city’s chapter of Physicians for [...]

2009-08-25T12:58:49-04:00October 25, 1989|Bioethics|

Update on Medical Ethics Removing organs without permission

Under pressure from advocates for the mentally retarded, Quebec has agreed to amend legislation that should have allowed removal of organs from healthy mentally retarded people, and children under 14, without their consent.  This morally reprehensible legislation had already been passed by the National Assembly and only needed proclamation to become law when protests of outraged groups finally reached the government late [...]

2009-08-24T09:25:46-04:00March 24, 1989|Bioethics|

C.M.A. asked to reconsider

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) Board of Directors approved the following three paragraphs at its meeting on May 21, 1988: “Induced abortion is the active termination of a pregnancy prior to fetal viability.  (Viability is understood to be the ability of the fetus to survive independently of the maternal environment.  According to current medical knowledge, viability is dependent on fetal weight, degree [...]

2009-08-24T07:05:58-04:00February 24, 1989|Abortion, Bioethics|

Will Roussel market “killer pill”?

An abortion pill called a contra gestation pill may be marketed in Canada if abortion is not considered a criminal act in the future, a large Montreal-based pharmaceutical firm hinted recently Roussel Canada Inc., is considering asking the Health Protection Branch of the federal government for permission to market the drug RU-486 under the name Mifespristine, in Canada.  The drug causes an [...]

2009-08-19T11:32:55-04:00February 19, 1989|Abortion, Bioethics, Issues|

What happened to our Doctors?

The Doctors Here is a story which appeared in the most recent London Right to Life Newsletter. It is probably not factually true, but is a parable with a very striking lesson. I shall tell it briefly in my own words. A young mother carrying a baby came into a doctor’s office. She said, “Doctor, I want you to get me out [...]

2009-08-19T11:09:57-04:00January 19, 1989|Bioethics|
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