Wednesday, December 09, 2009

articles of interest - Dec. 9

Your Final Wish Isn’t Always Your Doctor’s Command: by Ann Woolner

In the continuing sagas of the power of advance directives, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has come out saying they will not uphold a person’s wishes if they run counter to Catholic morals. The alternative is to move the person to a non-Catholic hospital. I think this issue is very fascinating from an ethical standpoint, for there are two ethical systems coming into conflict. All major religions run into this potential problem, namely when to follow the religious ethic over the ethics of the country. The U.S. is heavily into autonomy. Religion tends to limit autonomy. At the same time, it has been argued that the religious person chooses to limit his/her autonomy by becoming a member of the religion. In this situation, the issue is whether tube feeding is obligatory as nutrition is a basic need of humanity. I think that their choice might also boil down to the fight on human value. Sometimes we too easily argue “so and so has no quality of life,” arguing in a sense that there is no value to the person’s continued existence.

DHS takes action in bungled posting of airport security secrets By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
All I can is oops. I guess homeland security doesn’t worry about our security so much. This is very scary.

Copenhagen's political science by Sarah Palin

Those of you following Climategate will find this editorial refreshing. Science is not above politics. For those interested in the subject of the subjectivity of science will want to read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As many people have called for, with the latest in the false findings, Copenhagen needs to be boycotted. It begins to appear as though the Copenhagen talks are less about “climate control” than all out redistributing wealth from the wealthy countries to those who would be unable to support climate change regulations.

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