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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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 Two weeks ago President Obama sent a memo to the members of the
President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB) [1] informing them that their
appointments were being prematurely terminated. Impatient to nominate
his own slate, Obama decided the September 2009 expiry date of their
present term was too long to wait.
An advisory commission such as the PCB serves at the pleasure of the
sitting president. Since the members whom he served notice were all
Bush appointees, Obama’s move was unsurprising. It is however a
further indication of the direction the new administration is taking
public moral discourse.
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06/24/2009
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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 The term “bioethics” is of recent coinage. The first to use it was Van
Rensselaer of the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960’s, an
oncologist who used it in an evolutionary sense somewhat distant from
the sense it has acquired. Warren T. Reich, one of the original
professors at what was then called the “The Joseph and Rose Kennedy
Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics” at
Georgetown University and editor of the first edition of the 4 volume
Encyclopedia of Bioethics, credits André Hellegers, the Dutch
obstetrician/fetal physiologist/demographer who founded the Kennedy
Institute at Georgetown University as the one “who used the term to
apply to the ethics of medicine and the biological sciences in such a
way that the name caught on in academic circles and in the mind of the
public. He did this initially by seeing to it that the word bioethics
appeared in the original name of the Kennedy Institute at its founding
in 1971: The Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human
Reproduction and Bioethics” (see Reich’s essay, “How Bioethics Got Its
Name” in The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 23, 1993).
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06/16/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Earlier this year, seven directors of bioethics programs at Jesuit
universities, calling themselves the Consortium of Jesuit Bioethics
Programs, published in Commonweal a critique of papal teaching on the
moral requirement to provide food and water to patients in the
so-called persistent vegetative state (PVS). [1] Their aim is to
influence the American bishops against amending the Ethical and
Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs) to bring
the directives in line with the March 2004 teach¬ing of Pope John Paul
II on PVS. [2] The amendment will be considered at the bishops’ June
2009 meeting.
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06/11/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Even those minimally familiar with the stem cell debate are aware of
the vast disparity that presently exists between the clinical
usefulness of human adult stem cells (hASCs) and embryonic stem cells
(hESCs). Not only have hESCs, despite billions of dollars spent, not
given rise to a single clinical success (none, zero); but until
recently, there had not even been a single clinical trial using hESCs
accepted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This illustrates
the concern of that regulatory body and the wider field for the serious
problems associated with hESC therapies, the most serious of which is
tumor formation.
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05/26/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Cypriot born reproductive scientist Panos Zavos is up to his old
mischief, claiming this time to have cloned 14 human embryos and to
have transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women happy to give
birth to cloned babies. This is his third public announcement in six
years claiming to have succeeded at the controversial procedure [1].
Zavos, a naturalized American citizen, has fertility clinics in
Kentucky and in Cyprus. The British Independent reports that his
present work took place at a secret laboratory in a country where
cloning is legal (it speculates somewhere in the Middle East) [2].
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05/07/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Because of heightened interest in my last piece, Stem Cells for
Dummies, I decided to pursue further questions pertaining to scientific
interest in embryonic stem cells (ESCs).
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04/09/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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What is a Stem Cell?
A stem cell is an undifferentiated cell (i.e., a cell that has not
yet specialized into a particular cell type, e.g., liver cell,
pancreatic cell, or cardiac cell) with two unique capacities: the
first, for rapid and prolonged self-multiplication into daughter cells
identical with itself; and the second, for development and
differentiation into specific types of cells such as liver and cardiac
cells.
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03/19/2009
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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 September 8, 2008 is the official date of a new doctrinal document prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and approved by Pope Benedict XVI on bioethical issues. It is a sequel to the CDF’s February 1987 doctrinal Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origins and on the Dignity of Procreation (Latin title Donum vitae). Dignitas Personae (henceforth DP), formally released for publication on December 12, 2008, is of a doctrinal nature and falls within the category of documents that "participate in the ordinary Magisterium of the successor of Peter" (see Instruction Donum veritatis, no.18), and is to be received by Catholics "with the religious assent of their spirit" (DP, no. 37).
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01/15/2009
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by E. Christian Brugger, P.h.D, Senior Fellow in Ethics
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 Imagine a day when patients suffering from tuberculosis could go down to a hospital and trade in their diseased windpipes for a brand-spanking-new model custom built from their own cells and live free of the disease. Or where parents of congenitally brain damaged children could purchase a blood transfusion cocktail that would unlock the world of mental normality for their beloved children. Or where heart-attack victims could receive cardiac injections of miracle cells that not only would heal their damaged heart muscle, but also stimulate new blood vessel growth in their hearts and reduce scar tissue from the injury? Say ‘good morning’ to the stem cell revolution because that day has begun. I should be more precise: the ADULT stem cell revolution HAS BEGUN. Remarkably, these are not the dreams of some distant future but the treatments and possibilities opening before us right now.
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12/11/2008
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by Christian Brugger Ph.D
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 A few encouraging stem cell updates. First, last month the online journal Nature published the results of experiments in mice by a team at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in which common cells in the pancreas were converted into more precious insulin producing cells, precisely the kind that diabetics need to survive. And the most extraordinary thing: the conversion took place inside the body of the living mice.
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10/02/2008
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by William E. May, Ph.D
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 This helpful book could be called “Catholic Bioethics for Everyone.” Dividing their material into an introduction and seven chapters subdivided into 57 questions, Smith and Kaczor offer a broad view of major life issues in easy-to-understand language. One of their major goals is to help fellow Catholics and others to understand the reasons behind Church teaching on crucial issues concerning human life; they also hope that their presentation of fundamental principles will guide readers in making their own choices on disputed questions on which the Church has not taken a firm stance (pp. xiii-xix).
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09/22/2008
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by Christian Brugger, Ph.D.
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 Fellow in Ethics Christian Brugger clarifies, in layman terms, what it is to be: To be who we are when we were an embryo.
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03/20/2008
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by Christian Brugger, Ph.D
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Culture of Life Fellow in Ethics, Dr. Christian Brugger, explains the development, process, ethics and scientific contributions of Induced Pluripotent State Stem Cells.
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03/07/2008
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by Jennifer Kimball, B.E.L.
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 A collage of headlines covering Monday’s breakthrough in stem cell research, published in the scientific journals, Science and Cell, attempt to state what, to many, is not so obvious. What we have found are pluripotent stem cells, equal to, but not to be confused with pluripotent embryonic stem cells.
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11/21/2007
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by Mark Adams
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Scientists from Harvard and California announced at a recent conference their intent to clone human embryos and destroy them for their stem cells and are hoping to succeed where disgraced South Korean scientist Woo-Suk Hwang dramatically failed. Hwang, who claimed to be the first in the world to successfully clone humans, was discredited in January after it was revealed he had fabricated almost all of his data.
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04/19/2006
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by Mark Adams
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Scientists in Germany have discovered another possible source for embryonic-like stem cells that can be obtained without destroying a human embryonic life. Researchers found that stem cells taken from the testes of mice have many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells. The scientists were able to take those stem cells and turn them into heart, brain and skin cells and successfully inject them back into mice.
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03/29/2006
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by Wendy Wright
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The FDA broke its own rules in the fast-track approval of the “abortion pill.” Sadly, women are paying with their lives. Most people assume that advances made in medicine and science are helpful—and save lives. Regrettably, that is not always true. In the case of the abortion pill, RU-486, women are not helped—and lives are certainly not saved. Yet in September of 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved RU-486, or Mifeprex, for sale in the United States—a drug whose only purpose is to kill human beings.
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01/31/2006
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by Culture of Life
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Revelations that South Korean doctor Woo Suk Hwang, once thought to be the groundbreaking creator of the world's first cloned human embryos, fabricated all of his research has forced many mainstream media outlets to concede that human cloning and embryo destructive research were dealt a serious blow by the scandal. Despite efforts by some proponents of cloning to spin the story into a case for federally-funded research, Hwang has been largely portrayed as a disgraced scientist who has thrown the future of human cloning into jeopardy.
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01/04/2006
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Save the Date:
Culture of Life Foundation's 2nd Annual
William E. May
Award for Promoting Ethics and the Human Person
September, 2009
Washington, DC
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