Editor:
Jerry Novotny OMI
Updated Daily:
January 28, 2012

Breaking News

Death Penalty Fails — Judge
The judiciary is worried by the increasing number of murder cases brought before the courts, making capital punishment appear to have failed to achieve the desired deterrent effect it was perceived it would, High Court judge Justice Lawrence Kamocha said yesterday.

Sharp Increase In Death Penalty In Iran
Iran executed at least three children in 2011, one of them in public, while more than 100 juvenile offenders remain on death row, the report said. Iranian law allows capital punishment for those who have reached puberty, defined as 9 years for girls and 15 years for boys.

Elder Abuse On The Rise As Seniors Living Longer
We may already have reached the point where elder mistreatment is growing. Our nursing home abuse lawyers know that it is important to reiterate that abuse of this community comes in many forms—it means much more than being physically harmed by another.

Elderly Care Is Already In Crisis. Why We Must All Open Our Eyes To The Longevity Timebomb
Elderly care does not merely need reform; it is in dire and utter crisis. Somehow, we can conjure up billions needed for a new high-speed rail link; yet we apparently cannot find the wherewithal, nor, it seems, the will, to look after our senior citizens with the civility and dignity they so richly deserve. I cannot help thinking that we have lost our priorities along the way.

New Evidence Refutes Fraud Findings In Dr. Wakefield Case
In February 1998, the Lancet published Dr. Andrew Wakefield's case series of a group of autistic children with gastric problems, which has become one of the most controversial studies in medicine because part of the patients' story included regression after receiving the MMR vaccine

Scientists Call Moratorium On Study Of Deadly Bird Flu
Those who work with the H5N1 virus announce a 60-day voluntary halt to explain the benefits of research and the measures to minimize risks to the public.

Half A Million Children In Yemen Are Likely To Die From Malnutrition
“This year alone, half a million children in Yemen are likely to die from malnutrition or to suffer lifelong physical and cognitive consequences resulting from malnutrition if we don’t take action. Malnutrition is preventable. And, therefore, inaction is unconscionable,” Calivis said. “Conflict, poverty and drought, compounded by the unrest of the previous year, the high food and fuel prices, and the breakdown of social services, are putting children’s health at great risks and threatening their very survival.”

Kenyan Pro-Lifers Kickoff Natural Family Planning Program
Couples in Kenya are embracing Natural Family Planning (NFP) with the help of a new clinic opened by the pro-life group Human Life International (HLI) Kenya in collaboration with the Catholic Church.

More Headlines…

Recent Articles By:

Ethical Perspectives

New! A New Beginning at the End of Days

Ron Panzer
Some think dying needs a push, "assistance" to make it come sooner. They find dozens of ways to hasten death, imposing death on the unwilling in most cases. The so-called "choice" to be "assisted" to death is a fraud, as patients are made to be unconscious and then finished off without even asking permission. The problem with blind zealotry is that many thousands of patients can be victimized in the process, and have been. Safeguards never prevent misuse of such a power over life and death. Even government reports from European nations confirm that thousands of patients have been recently involuntarily put to death.

New! The Morality of "GIFT" and "IUI"

William E. May
I will first describe GIFT/IUI, identify the moral issue, summarize arguments given until 2011 pro and con the moral rightness of these procedures, summarize a somewhat new argument in opposition to them advanced in 2011 by Helen Watt, briefly reflect on the way "the language of the body" relates to their morality, and offer a Conclusion.

New! POLST: "Self-Determination" or Imposed Death?

Ione Whitlock
I hear often from people who believe they or their aged/ill/disabled loved ones are being pressured into refusing treatment - usually not by being brow beaten or yelled at - but from a constant, drip, drip, drip of conversation after conversation after conversation, which only end when the patient agrees to what the doctor or ethics committee want. In this phenomenon of the never-ending-conversation, people often perceive an attempt to wear them down by sheer exhaustion into acquiescing. Smith's "drip, drip, drip" sums up the POLST process rather well.

Pax and the Emotional Life
A Look at Virtue as the Principle of Emotional Stability

Doug McManaman
Synopsis: If we keep our attention focused on the meaning of pax as a positive state of harmony and order -- and even submission -- , the key to a genuinely peaceful life will more readily come to light. The human person is an emotional being, and so an emotionally healthy life, one that results in a profound sense of peace (pax), will come about as a result of a harmonious ordering of the eleven basic emotions.

Wikileaks, wikileakers, and wiki-ethics

Margaret Somerville
Enough of kneejerk reactions. We need to take a long, hard look at the ethics of releasing government secrets.

Church needs own media. NHK a good model

Anthony Zimmerman
Russel Shaw is absolutely right when stating that "the Church must rely on its own media" for evangelization (March 2003)

"The Giving Space"

Ron Panzer
Depending upon your perspective, all of this life can be understood as one continuous dying process or as one continuous living process. However, most prefer to live their lives without thinking about the end, without thinking about any of this at all. They do everything to avoid confronting their mortality and are not even aware that they put up mental roadblocks to any reminder of their own mortality.

Organ donation: The inconvenient truth

John B. Shea
Organ donation can be a moral good if the means used to obtain the organs is itself morally good. The circumstances under which this holds true have been described. The critical question is whether a person is truly dead when declared "brain dead" or to have suffered "cardiac death." The answer, in light of the scientific evidence, is that it has not been established cardiac or brain death criteria indicate the real death of a patient with certainty. Mauro Cozzoli, writing about the status of the embryo, has stated, "The uncertainty with regard to whether we are dealing with a human individual is not an abstract doubt, regarding a theory, principle, or doctrinal position (dubium uris). As such, it is a doubt about a fact concerning the life of a human being, his existence here and now (dubium facti)." As such, "it creates the same obligations as certainty.