There is a hint — no more — that the Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research may be crumbling in the face of mounting public and political pressure. As technology magnifies the power of individuals, it is more critical than ever before in history that individuals exercise their power ethically. Yet in health […]

If America is to catch up with the rest of the civilized world in healthcare, it must stop kidding itself that it has “the best health care system in the world,” as Hillary Clinton claims even while presenting powerful evidence to the contrary. And while America argues itself out of the stem cell therapy business, […]

Elizabeth Blackburn’s removal from the President’s Council on Bioethics has left the council speaking with a pretty much single and pretty much evangelical Christian voice. Given the president’s declared intent to advance the causes of evangelism through national policy, and given the evangelicals’ rigid opposition to messing with God’s handiwork, then future advances in the […]

Rationing imposed by a heartless free market deprives up to 50 percent of non-elderly American adults with disabilities of the medical equipment and drugs that would help them. Hospitals also impose rationing; much of it avoidable if hospitals would make use of information technology, which has had major payback for most other US industries, though […]

President Bush’s Council on Bioethics has issued a lengthy report looking at the ethics of technologies for screening eggs and embryos, enhancing human physique and intellect, and extending the human lifespan. Though we have some issues with it, it is certainly timely, because even as major diseases stand on the brink of extermination, thereby promising […]

Doubts about the validity of recent health cost predictions highlight the growing futility of long-range studies that fail to factor-in the dynamic of technological innovation. An example is LVADs, which could cost Medicare $15 billion annually if there is no competition and if competition and ever-improving, lower-cost technologies do not bring the cost way down […]