Health Care with a Conscience
By James C. Capretta
Posted: Monday November 17, 2008
Catholic hospitals have long been important providers of American medical care. But as they have increasingly had to contend with secular institutions and regulations, their unique emphasis on values and compassion is being challenged. How can we keep the faith in health care?  [Read More]

The Cabinet of Dr. Obama
Dissecting the health care proposals of Obama and McCain.
By Yuval Levin
Posted: Thursday October 16, 2008
Barack Obama's health-insurance plan creates an incentive to drop employees from existing plans, and then takes private insurers out of the race to cover them by using price controls to make the public option cheaper. The plan's goal is to drive Americans into a public Medicare-like insurance system by default.  [Read More]

In the Beginning
The Democratic ticket confuses science and theology.
By Yuval Levin
Posted: Monday September 8, 2008
Barack Obama and Joe Biden intentionally confuse the question of when life begins and the question of human equality, seeking to mask scientific facts with ill-informed theological smokescreens. That's rather strange behavior for the self-declared "party of science."  [Read More]

Remaking Humanity
By Christine Rosen
Posted: Monday September 8, 2008
When historians study hubris, they usually tell stories about the dazzling, cruel, or ill-fated exploits of specific people--presidents, dictators, revolutionaries. In Fatal Misconception, Matthew Connelly, an associate professor of history at Columbia University, looks instead at an idea: controlling human reproduction.  [Read More]

Blinded by Science
Diana DeGette's memoir of confusion.
By Yuval Levin
Posted: Wednesday August 20, 2008
Congresswoman Diana DeGette, a leader in the fight for federal funding for embryo-destructive research, has written a memoir filled with factual errors, lacking in ethical arguments, and brimming with disgust at social and religious conservatives. But what it has to tell us about the confusion at the juncture of science and politics in America is even more troubling.   [Read More]

The Synapse and the Soul
By Adam Keiper
Posted: Monday July 14, 2008
In his latest book, eminent neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga argues that science can explain "what makes us unique." But what should we do with the knowledge we receive from cutting-edge brain research -- how ought we to act? Gazzaniga offers no insights into what neuroscience means for how we live, except to offer up some unattractive visions of a future age of brain implants and mind-machine interfaces.  [Read More]

Public Opinion and the Embryo Debates
By Yuval Levin
Posted: Monday July 14, 2008
Our political debates about stem cell research in recent years have stood in a peculiar relation to public opinion. Rather than seek to marshal public sentiment, or even quite build public support, all sides have wanted to claim a preexisting bedrock of widely shared attitudes backing their favored policy outcome.  [Read More]

The Myth of Multitasking 
By Christine Rosen
Posted: Monday July 14, 2008
In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people--so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.  [Read More]

In the Shadow of Progress
Being Human in the Age of Technology
By Eric Cohen
Posted: Tuesday July 1, 2008
We live in an age of unprecedented human mastery -- over birth and death, body and mind, nature and human nature. In every realm of life, science and technology have brought remarkable advances and improvements: we are healthier, wealthier, and more comfortable than ever before. But our gratitude for the benefits of progress increasingly mixes with concern about the meaning and consequences of our newfound powers.  [Read More]

A Life Worth Living
By Christine Rosen
Posted: Monday June 30, 2008
Harriet McBryde Johnson forced us to look at disability in a different way -- not as something that we should seek to eradicate, but as something that is integral to the human condition, a "natural part of the human experience," as the American Association of People With Disabilities puts it.  [Read More]