AJOB Issue 8:7 is Hot Off the Presses!
Today on bioethics.net, the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics is posted. For those of you interested in reproductive ethics or ethical issues at the beginning of life, this is an issue for you. 
Toby Ord writes about how natural embryo loss presents logical problems for those who believe that embryos have the same moral value as a person from the moment of conception. Oops, forgot about that loophole!
McCullough and Chervenak argue that "unborn child" as a phrase with descriptive and normative value should be replaced with a new concept, "fetus as patient". This conjures up images of in utero humans with newly formed limbs with tiny hospital ID bands on them doesn't it?
Lastly, Miller and Truog argue for a Socratic bioethics that challenges we bioethicists' conventional wisdom. Could that mean that bioethicist really would become Socrates with a beeper?
Click these links or visit the website to find out.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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Pardon my lack of humor in appreciating Toby Ord's elaborate joke.
There is no point along the continuum from conception to advanced age, during which humans are immune from dying. For instance, with the best prenatal care in the world, there will be miscarriages at every possible moment of fetal development.
As I've commented before, the moment when ovum meets sperm, and the DNA of a discrete human who has never existed before comes together in one organism, is the one not life-life moment you can point to along that continuum. For those of us who think this thing through logically, it's hard to identify a different point on the continuum and say, there's where the developing fetus changed from a blob to a human. For those of us logical thinkers who are pro-life, the need to respect human life starting with that zygote is a slam-dunk. As always, everyone is free to disagree. Mocking this viewpoint makes the mocker appear not to have any real argument against it.
- by Laura(southernxyl) on Sep 5, 2008 at 8:17 AM | link