Bioethics

I have written before about Marinou Arends, the Dutch doctor who euthanized a woman with dementia struggling to stay alive. Readers may recall the doctor first drugged her patient’s coffee and then, when the woman awakened and fought against being killed, had the family hold the patient down... Read more

Forty years ago, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down state laws forbidding the sale, distribution, and use of contraceptives on the basis of a novel constitutional doctrine known as the right to marital privacy. At the time, the decision appeared to... Read more

Those who advocate the legalization of physician-assisted suicide always claim that doctor-prescribed death will involve a meticulous process of intimate conversations and hands-on examinations by qualified physicians. They promise that patients who request assisted suicide as a solution to... Read more

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled on Tuesday, April 21, that it is lawful for doctors to euthanize patients with severe dementia, provided that the patient had expressed a desire to be euthanized while still legally capable of doing so.  Lower courts had previously ruled that a... Read more

Catholic hospitals are under unremitting attack—from prestigious medical journals, media, and lawyers in courtrooms. The goal is to coerce these venerable institutions into replacing their faith-based methods of medical practice with secular moral standards that deny the sanctity of human... Read more

At a hospital in New York City, an intensive-care-unit physician faces a terrible dilemma: There are two coronavirus patients in a severe situation, both competing for only one available ICU bed and ventilator. One is a 57-year-old heavy smoker, the other a 72-year-old marathon runner. Who... Read more

Despite his parents’ protests that he showed “signs of life,” a four-month old boy who was severely brain damaged was legally declared dead and has been removed from a ventilator in the U.K. Midrar Ali was disconnected from his ventilator sometime after judges agreed with doctors this... Read more

More than a dozen patients are killed by euthanasia daily in Canada, where Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government legalized euthanasia just under four years ago and has announced it will enforce broader new regulations allowing patients who are suffering — but not terminally ill... Read more

A Swiss prisoner is challenging the country’s policy to bar inmates from receiving assisted suicide after his request to die was denied. Peter Vogt, 69, is serving the equivalent of a life sentence after being convicted of multiple rapes, including of a child. He requested assisted suicide... Read more

A 33-year-old orangutan who was granted 'legal personhood' in Argentina has been relocated to a new home in Wauchula, Florida. Patti Ragan, director of the Center for Great Apes where Sandra the orangutan is now living, told CNN she has been "inquisitive, calm, engaged and... Read more