Stem-Cell Sense
Clear thinking on a stem-cell anniversary.
Posted: Friday, May 26, 2006
A year after the House vote on the Castle-DeGette bill to overturn limits to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, very little remains of the arguments that seemed so persuasive then. On the contrary, developments in techniques to derive embryonic-like stem cells without requiring the destruction of embryos have given new ammunition to supporters of the current policy. The momentum has shifted firmly against the Castle-DeGette bill, even if most advocates continue to spout the same arguments, and many in the press continue to parrot them.  [Full Story]

Celling Spin
The reasonableness of the Bush policy, and the unreasonableness of its critics.
Posted: Wednesday, May 3, 2006
For connoisseurs of stem-cell spin, recent weeks have offered a feast. To advance the perception of American science in crisis, Jason Owen-Smith and Jennifer McCormick in the April 2006 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology compare the output of American scientists to that of their counterparts in the rest of the world combined, hoping to obscure the inconvenient fact that no single country comes close to challenging America's dominance of embryonic stem-cell research.   [Full Story]

Biotechnology and the Spirit of Capitalism

Posted: Monday, May 1, 2006
The moral meaning of capitalism has vexed us for centuries, and the age of biotechnology has only added to the perplexities. From selling human eggs to marketing impotence drugs to reality television shows about cosmetic surgery, bio-capitalism is becoming increasingly important. Eric Cohen looks back at capitalism’s origins and ahead to capitalism’s future, and wonders whether the new commerce of the body may force us to reconsider the moral aspirations and moral limits of capitalism itself.  [Full Story]

Embryonic Problems
The South Korean cloning scandal offers a good opportunity to rethink stem-cell research.
Posted: Monday, March 20, 2006
If partisanship can be put aside, it may be possible to advance research in a way that all citizens can embrace, and to replace the corruption of cloning with responsible science. That is an outcome that should appeal to everybody. And it would be a silver lining in a scandal that has tainted a broad swath of science -- and not only in Korea.  [Full Story]

The New Atlantis, Winter 2006
With articles on man and machine, scientific corruption, guerrilla media, and much more...
Posted: Monday, February 20, 2006
The latest issue of The New Atlantis includes major essays on Man, Mind and Machines and the challenge to define "human"; a search for the connection between domestic tranquility and our domestic technology; how the blogger "Davids" are slaying the mainstream media "Goliath"; the scientific corruption at the heart of the Korean stem cell scandal and much more.  [Full Story]

The Many Faces of Technology
The State of the Union is the state of technology.
Posted: Friday, February 3, 2006
Technology in its many guises was a central theme of President Bush's State of the Union address--from Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons to the production of revolutionary energy technologies to the need to ban the creation of human-animal hybrids. In other words: Technology as mortal threat. Technology as political liberator. Technology as moral danger.   [Full Story]

Conservative Bioethics and the Search for Wisdom

Posted: Thursday, February 2, 2006
"Conservative" bioethics is informed by a rich view of human personhood, a decent respect for the well-considered views of people across the political spectrum, and a philosophy of the state carefully calibrated to ensure that imperfect people can live together in community. The deepest disagreements between conservatives and liberals are rooted in different ways of understanding the moral ideal of equality.  [Full Story]

Debating Human Enhancement

Posted: Monday, January 30, 2006
EPPC Fellow and New Atlantis editor Eric Cohen recently particpated in a panel discussion sponsored by Reason magazine on the subject of human enhancement. "The question is whether the things that seem like enhancements really are enhancements," he said. "The disquiet that some people have with the biotech revolution is due to our worry that in trying to make life better in ways we recognize, we're going to make it worse in ways we can't even imagine."  [Full Story]

Orphans by Design

Posted: Monday, January 30, 2006
"Orphan" is one of those words that seems old-fashioned to modern ears -- a word that evokes abject poverty in a Dickens novel. But in the years ahead, our reproductive technologies may lead us down a new, terrible path of creating orphans by design. In this case, the problem is not the tragic death of parents but the deliberate creation of children without living biological mothers or fathers.  [Full Story]

"Cast Me Not Off in Old Age"

Posted: Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Although growing old is a natural part of being human, the circumstances in which most Americans age and die are increasingly "unnatural" and surely unprecedented. Death comes on the doctor's watch and in high-tech surroundings, almost always following years of chronic illness, typically preceded by decisions about further medical intervention, increasingly made on behalf of patients incapable of making decisions for themselves. Thanks to medicine's prowess in sustaining life on the edge, it is harder than ever to know when it is "time to die."   [Full Story]