Gormally, Luke
6 Articles at Lifeissues.net

Luke Gormally is senior research fellow of the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics in London. He has edited or written seven books and fifty articles in bioethics. He had previously studied philosophy at Heythrop (Pontifical Athenaeum) and theology in the Benedictine community at Prinknash Abbey, Gloucester. He has been a member of the Catholic Bishops' Committee on Bioethical Issues since 1984, and was elected a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 1996.

Articles

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Seven Reasons Why They Should Not Be Legalized

It would be contrary to any legal system which purports to protect and enforce a just social order to legalize killing which rests for its justification on the belief that certain lives lack worth. Why?

Date posted: 2002-10-19

Legislating for Advance Refusals of Treatment: What is at issue?

Some patients are attracted by the idea of committing advance refusals of treatment to paper because they think they can thereby ensure that they do not receive unacceptable treatment. The scenario some have in mind is that of doctors employing all the apparatus of the intensive care unit to keep them alive when it would be more appropriate to leave them to die unencumbered by this technology. There are those who choose to play on the fear of this kind of scenario to advocate legislation to make advance refusals of treatment binding. And among them are advocates of euthanasia who see the advancement of their cause by this legislative route.

Date posted: 2002-10-11

Medical Ethics

What is to count as sound medical practice in regard to withholding and withdrawing treatment could never be exhaustively settled by legislation. But the citizens of our society, all of whom are potentially patients, do need to know that in making such decisions doctors are constrained by a framework of law which makes absolutely impermissible both intentional killing (by action or omission) and deliberate assistance in suicide (by action or omission).

Date posted: 2002-09-25

Obstetrics and Gynaecology in a multi-cultural society: the Catholic view

Is there a practice of Obstetrics and Gynaecology which accommodates committed Catholics? Nearly all the evidence suggests the answer is 'No'. The practice of abortion has largely closed the profession to them.

Date posted: 2002-09-10

Contraception and Catholic Sexual Ethics

The deep reason why so much that is said in the contemporary Church about sex and marriage is shallow and defective is that we are unwilling to face up to the power of sin in our lives. Everywhere one finds what amounts in effect to a denial of the reality of Original Sin, of the extent to which we are powerfully attracted by illusory visions of human fulfilment, and these become idols in our lives.

Date posted: 2002-09-04

Human Dignity and Respect for the Elderly

A secularist world-view has no reason to accept that there are certain 'givens' of the human condition which it is the part of wisdom to accept. This is more and more evident in relation both to the beginnings and the endings of human lives. Many cannot see that children should be begotten through normal marital intercourse. For technologically assisted conception envisages the child as a designer product, subject to quality control to satisfy 'parental' wishes, and disposable if unsatisfactory. Similarly, for many in our society the debility and dependency of numbers of elderly people are unacceptable.

Date posted: 2002-09-03