Brave New Bioethics
My podcast in which I discuss issues relating to human exceptionalsism, bioethics, and everything else we consder here at Secondhand Smoke.
The Discovery Institute
My controversial think tank. See what the fuss is all about.
The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
The best single source for information on euthanasia and assisted suicide, with an opposing perspective.
The Center for Bioethics and the Culture (CBC)
Equipping people of traditional Judeo/Christian faith to understand the importance of bioethics and biotechnology.
The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (CBHD)
The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity exists to help individuals and organizations address the pressing bioethical challenges of our day, including managed care, end-of-life treatment, genetic intervention, euthanasia, and reproductive technologies (from a distinctly Christian perspective).
Bioethics.com
Your global information source on bioethics news and issues.
Choosing Tomorrow
Nigel Cameron's blog on "emerging technologies," in which the bioethicist strives to help forge "consensus and stability as we move into the Techno Century."
Bioethics Defense Fund
A bioethics law and policy organization whose mission is address the human rights violations involved in contemporary bioethical issues.
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (Canada) prepares a broadly based network of groups and individuals as an effective social barrier against euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Euthanasia.com
A very thorough, well organized, and easily accessed on-line research library stocked with articles and primary source materials about euthanasia, assisted suicide, and related issues, from an opposing perspective.
The Human Future
Jennifer Lahl's blog about the Brave New World
Hands Off Our Ovaries
Pro choice and pro life feminists protecting women in biotechnological research.
Human Life Matters
The blog of Mark Pickup. Disability rights and pro life advocacy from a committed Christian whose "views stand in stark contrast with a world of utility, autonomy and cost-benefit-analysis."
Compassionate Healthcare Network (CHN)
CHN provides educational services through all forms of media to all persons regarding the inherent absolute value of all human life.
The Center for Genetics and Society
Left leaning think tank supports benign medical applications of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies, while opposing the commidification of human life.
The Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT) Website
A Website dedicated to answering questions about this potential alternative to embryonic stem cell resesearch.
The Terri Schindler-Sciavo Foundation
Run by Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings, "a non-profit group dedicated to ensuring the rights of disabled, elderly and vulnerable citizens against care rationing, euthanasia and medical killing."
Not Dead Yet
Disability Rights activism, raw and to the point.
Physicians for Compassionate Care
PCC promotes compassionate care for severely-ill patients without sanctioning or assisting their suicide. Members affirm an ethic based on the principle that all human life is inherently valuable.
Center for Consumer Freedom
The Center for Consumer Freedom is PETA's worst nightmare. This scrappy, industry funded, non profit, tells the terrible truth about the animal liberation movement.
Americans for Medical Progress
A non-profit organizatoin whose mission is to promote public understanding of and support for the appropriate role of animals in biomedical research.
blog.bioethics.net
Mainstream bioethics thinking: enter at your own risk!
National Catholic Bioethics Center
Bioethics research and advocacy from the Catholic side of the street.
BioEdge
A good, objective source of information about bioethics and biotech.
8 Comments:
Have you read Pushed? The US maternity system is in crisis b.c of hospitalists & insurance companies. We have an embarassingly high maternal death rate b/c of a c-section epidemic.
Hospitals are not the best place for healthy laboring women--that's one thing the Dutch have right.
I'm a huge fan of yours & hope you put this book on your list.
Annie the superfast reader: Thanks for this. I am certainly no fan of the current HMO approach. But I don't think we have women in labor turned away from hospitals. In Canada, women are sent to the USA to give birth for due to the same problem.
Wesley,
We can finally agree here. Socialized medicine will become the bane of US health care.
Expect a decline in service and quality, less competition,lower wages for doctors and less ability to form malpractice suits.
Innovation will be stifled by the long arm of govt mandated health care.
The US was a model of health care until the govt allowed insurance and drug companies to corrupt the free market.
Of course this sickness is just a symptom of the larger cancer that has become our fascist leaning social system.
We have other, more serious problems--women forced to have unnecessary interventions that have nothing to do with the health of mother or baby. It has become next to impossible for a woman to have an unmedicated birth in a hospital setting. OBs are trained to treat problems that arise during birth, but they are not trained to see birth as a natural process.
Honestly, in most cases those women would be safer birthing at home than going to an American hospital. The national c-section average is around 35%. At some hospitals it is MUCH higher.
Oh, and I know lots of women who labored in triage b/c no beds were available. One friend of mine gave birth in a closer used as a passageway so people were coming & going as she was pushing.
I do hope you have a chance to read this book. These might not be culture of death issues per se, but they stem from the same disrespect for life.
Oh--and I'm not arguing in favor of socialized medicine, just against hospitals & insurance companies.
annie: I'm with you, babe.
I'm with Annie on hospitals not being the best place for birthin'. Having babies isn't a sickness that needs treating- mammals have been doing it for years without IV's and drugs, most of which are just liability reduction measures on behalf of the hospital. I also hate that they take the baby away for hours after birth to bake in an impersonal little oven. I want my baby nursing and/or laying on my warm body rather than abandoned to a machine.
Maybe I'm just a hippie, but I intend to birth my babies in my bathtub with a midwife. Or if it's warm enough, on my porch in a kiddie pool.
Certainly this story about turning away birthing mothers displays a lack of compassion; and while I am not aware of any birthing mothers being turned away while in labor in the US, that fact that we have an incredibly high infant mortality rates in this country also displays a lack of compassion. And I'm sure you could find other glaring examples all over the world that lack compassion -- so my query is this: Do you think that the US system is *more* compassionate than the NHS?
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