Stephen Pinker on The President’s Council on Bioethics: The general feeling is that, even if a new technology would improve life and health and decrease suffering and waste, it might have to be rejected, or even outlawed, if it affronted human dignity. The problem is that “dignity” is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it.
My ethical problem with justifying the execution of one individual to deter other persons from committing crimes is that this reduces the one executed to a means to an end, thereby denying that person’s inherent dignity and worth as a child of God. Christians should never view a person as simply an instrument for achieving a goal, no matter how laudable the goal.
Most of us would say that, in one way or another, some sense of personhood applies to all human life. At the same time, there are some who would say that full rights of personhood apply to all human life, and to any instance of human life. For them the important question is not whether the full rights apply, but who should be the appropriate surrogate to protect and exercise those rights.
We have responsibilities as members of the Body to fulfill the vocations given to us. I am an elected deputy to General Convention and therefore have a responsibility to consider what common choices and commitments are appropriate and/or necessary for this part of the Church to do the work God has given us to do as the Church (as distinct from what I am called as an individual to do).
Who gives how much to whom? Why? And to what end? The New York Times Magazine published an in-depth exploration of the world of philanthropy on Sunday and still somehow managed to get a beautiful young actress on the cover.
As reported yesterday in The Lead there’s a new study out that finds payday lending is prevalent in the Bible Belt. Robert Parham, executive director
The natural hypothesis would be to assume that given Biblical condemnation of usury there would be aggressive regulation and less demand for payday loans in these states, but ironically, the numbers show the opposite is true. It’s sad that states with a pious and honorable religious heritage now disproportionately host predatory lenders.
Allison Schrager writes: It is hard to deny that aid can do harm when given too enthusiastically to countries in need. However, putting the ever-sceptical economist in me aside, the fact remains that I do want to help people in Afghanistan. How can I do this effectively, and without offending my professional sensibilities?
The report also reveals that some workers, who earn an average of $9.25 per day, were forced to stand during the whole of their twelve hour shifts and requests for chairs were denied. Even a six-month pregnant woman was forced to stand for the whole of a seven hour shift
The new work shows that the direct reprogramming technique can also produce versatile cells that are genetically matched to a person. But it avoids several problems that have bedeviled the cloning approach. For one thing, it doesn’t require a supply of unfertilized human eggs, which are hard to obtain for research and subjects the women donating them to a surgical procedure. Using eggs also raises the ethical questions of whether women should be paid for them.