For those of you not reading my Facebook, or who missed the exchange Sunshine started and Jennifer Bard and I ran with, Jennifer posted her thoughts about the news that DNA tests are better at detecting cervical cancer risks than a pap smear, and the paternalistic attitude of the doctors who refuse to give up the pap because of the well health ( Read more... )

Every so often, you get a really fun opportunity to interact with experts in a field at a casual level. I've had the pleasure of having several of these random moments, and one of my first involved neuroethics, an article by Danniell Dennett, the 2005 National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference, and some professor by the name of Paul Root Wolpe. Of ( Read more... )

Unless you've been hiding under a rock this last week, you're aware of the octuplets born to California single mom Nadya Suleman, and the intense ethical debate surrounding her pregnancy. Even before it was revealed that she has six other children (apparently all from IVF, although details are a bit fuzzy), medical experts were ready to lynch the ( Read more... )

A new study shows that many products containing HFCS contain mercury, and another study suggests that it's the corn itself that's contaminated.
Click here to read the details, watch a Corn Refiners commercial, or leave a comment.

Tonight at 9pm, Hallmark is airing the original movie "Sweet Nothing in My Ear". Before you decide to lynch me, hear me out: the movie is about a married couple, one hearing and one Deaf, who have to decide whether or not their deaf child should receive a cochlear implant. Director Joseph Sargent has a history of working with Deaf actors and making ( Read more... )

In an amusing aside, I was doing a quick search just now on Wikipedia for "the yuck factor" - rest assured, I was just reference hunting and feeling too lazy to go over to my bookshelf. I ended up on the page for Leon Kass's Wisdom of Repugnance (and I do have to admit I like the drawn differentiation between the yuck factor and the wisdom of ( Read more... )

Aliza Shvarts abortion as art Yale senior art project is continuing to create controversy. Originally billed as a student deliberately impregnating and aborting over the span of many months, and saving the fluids for an art project, was labeled fictitious performance art by Yale - a statement Shvarts immediately called inaccurate:Shvarts reiterated ( Read more... )