ethics
milhayser | December 4, 2009
On Wednesday, the NIH approved thirteen new embryonic stem cell lines for federally-funded research, with ninety-six additional lines still under review. These new approvals come as a direct result of the "Obama administration's new rules on federal funding for stem cell research, which reversed the Bush policy of prohibiting such funding in most cases." Read more about the new rules and a dismissed lawsuit against them on Dispatches From the Culture Wars by Ed Brayton. On Framing Science, Matthew C. Nisbet suggests that public attitudes toward stem cells are changing, and reminds us that…
pharyngula | November 13, 2009I'd never realized what a useful tool the Bible is in infallibly resolving difficult moral problems until I read this detailed dissection of a difficult situation on Answers in Genesis.
Here's the hypothetical situation: you know the whereabouts of a family of Jews hiding from the Nazis. A Nazi patrol comes up to you and asks where they are; you, a good God-fearing Christian, can either lie and say you don't know (which would be bad, because, like, lying is a sin), or you could tell the truth, and the Nazis would zip off and search for and presumably execute the family. What do you do?
As a…
pharyngula | November 12, 2009Sometimes I find it hard to believe how callous these conservative politicians can be. The governor of Rhode Island has just vetoed a bill that would have allowed a same-sex partner to make funeral arrangements for a dead partner. So imagine this: someone wracked with grief at the loss of someone to whom they had committed a substantial part of their life now gets to also be told that they are locked out of the responsibility of taking care of anything to do with the funeral ceremony. How degrading and insensitive; how vile and intrusive.
Shame on Governor Carcieri. It takes a real man to…
pharyngula | November 9, 2009We're learning a bit more about the fellow who was maced and arrested in Chicago, thanks to the efforts of the Chicago Ethical Humanist Society; members of that group are busily writing to me to let me know the Whole Truth of the incident, and why they were justified in siccing the police on Sunsara Taylor's cameraman. It's weird, though: they keep telling me how bad and awful and wicked this fellow is — his name is Gregory Koger, by the way — but they won't say what he did that justified the police assault on him. And that is dismaying. The ethical society doesn't seem to care much about…
pharyngula | November 4, 2009It's for college students only, and first prize is $2000. Come on, students, you're used to churning out term papers, and that prize is substantial.
The topic of the essay is free expression.
The Campaign for Free Expression is a CFI initiative to focus efforts and attention on one of the most crucial components of freethought: the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs about all subjects—especially religion. To encourage free expression and to emphasize the importance of this fundamental right, CFI and its sister organization, The Council for Secular…
pharyngula | November 3, 2009The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago has done an incredibly stupid thing. They invited Sunsara Taylor to give a talk on "Morality Without God"…and then disinvited her. The reasons weren't clear, other than that some people in the society disliked her politics — she's a communist — and the group caved and cancelled her speaking engagement a short two weeks before it was to happen.
Basically, the ethical society was unethical. You just don't do that. But then they made it worse.
They've been stonewalling. No explanations, no apologies, nothing — they might as well admit that they're feeling…
revere | November 1, 2009When swine flu began there was a hue and cry in some quarters to shut the border to prevent the virus from taking root in the US. It seems fairly clear, now, that by the time we detected the virus, in late April, it had already situated itself in the US -- assuming that it didn't start here in the first place. We don't really know where the jump from pigs to humans occurred, although the best guess is Mexico. Closing the borders would have done no good and would have stranded thousands of students and other tourists in Mexico. Since the US has more world travelers than Mexico, it was in fact…
grrlscientist | November 1, 2009tags: religion, belief system, ethics, values, lifestyle
Here's my results from Belief-o-matic, an online questionnaire that uses a series of 20 questions to help identify your belief system;
What did this quiz tell you your belief system should be?
pharyngula | October 30, 2009Whoa. This was a data-rich talk, and my ability to transcribe it was over-whelmed by all the stuff Hauser was tossing out. Unfortunately, I think the talk also suffered from excess and a lack of a good overview of the material. But it was thought-provoking anyway.
One of the themes was how people resolve moral dilemmas. He began with a real world example, the story of an overweight woman in South Africa who insisted on joining a tour exploring a cave, and got stuck in the exit tunnel, trapping 22 people behind her. Do you sacrifice one to save many? One of the trapped people was a diabetic…
grrlscientist | October 27, 2009tags: Food, Inc., food industry, factory farming, health, documentary, film, movie trailer, Eric Schlosser, streaming video
This is the official trailer for a 2008 documentary based on Eric Schlosser's research (Fast Food Nation DVD or book). It identifies, describes and details the problems of the food industry, its effects upon our health and provides us -- the consumer -- with strategies for changing the way the food industry operates so farmers can earn a living wage and all of us can enjoy improved health outcomes.
Learn more about this film or purchase the DVD.
pharyngula | October 24, 2009Especially since the designer turned the description into a humanist manifesto!
grrlscientist | October 23, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part eight (the last part) of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
Learn more about the film and purchase the DVD.
grrlscientist | October 22, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part seven of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 20, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Part three of Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
grrlscientist | October 17, 2009tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, atheist meets god, Edward Current, streaming video
It's the moment of judgment for one fool who says there is no God. Christians, get ready to laugh as he learns his eternal fate!
grrlscientist | October 16, 2009tags: FLOW, For the Love of Water, pollution, bottled water, film trailer, streaming video
Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: The World Water Crisis.
Next week, starting Monday, I will show you the entire film because this film is not yet in general circulation.
The critics say:
"An astonishingly wide-ranging film. An informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests." - New York Times
"Lively and engaging...Smartly Done" - Los…
revere | October 16, 2009Via Crof's blog (invaluable, as always) I learned of the decision of Massachusetts state health officials to vaccinate state prisoners before the rest of the population:
Prison officials warn that inmates could quickly spread the flu if not inoculated -- particularly those in high-risk groups such as AIDS patients.
Middlesex Sheriff James DiPaola told the Boston Herald that prisons were the perfect flu "breeding ground."
DiPaola dealt with riots in a Cambridge jail when rumors of swine flu spread there. (AP)
State legislators are already complaining that there are other, more vulnerable…
pharyngula | October 12, 2009This clip is from a traffic camera in Chile — it shows a dog hit by a car, and then another dog risking the heavy traffic to pull the injured animal to the side, out of danger.
I wonder what church the heroic dog attends?
Keep this in mind when you encounter people — yeah, I'm looking at you, Francis Collins — try to argue that morality and altruism and empathy are unique markers of a divine hand in our origin.
ejohnson | October 8, 2009What moves human beings to innovate measures of security? History will tell us that the most inventive and industrious times are fraught with warfare, uncertainty, and widespread fear. Greg Laden, a longtime ScienceBlogger, helps tackle this topic this month on the new Collective Imagination blog with Peter Tu, a systems design engineer who has developed algorithms for the FBI Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, and is the principle investigator for the ReFace Program at the Visualization and Computer Vision Group at the GE Global Research Center. Greg and Peter discuss the important…
revere | October 5, 2009In an earlier post I said I opposed mandatory vaccination for adults (but not for children), the one exception being for health care workers because they come in contact with people at high risk. My view then was that if you work in a health care institution and won't get vaccinated against flu, then you shouldn't come to work. Now I am re-evaluating my position as a result of some cogent and pragmatic comments from lawyer-bioethicist George Annas, professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University School of Public Health, and author of "The Rights of Patients." I know…