Mark Oshinskie, J.D.
240 Wayne St..
Highland Park, NJ 08904.
732-249-3096
Website:http://humanfuture.tripod.com
An emerging, purportedly effective gene-splicing technology known as CRISPR/Cas9 ("CRISPR") has received recent media attention. Fundamentally, scientists use an enzyme, Cas9 - or other, similar enzymes - to excise unwanted DNA sequences and replace those sequences with other DNA. CRISPR advocates are promoting gene splicing as a method to eliminate diseases or undesirable traits.
Date posted: 2016-03-04
Postponing parenthood is a high stakes risk with high social costs. Americans should carefully examine the cultural notions and technologies enabling this growing trend.
Date posted: 2014-12-24
While the Catholic Church strongly opposes in vitro fertilization ("IVF"), many Catholics disregard this teaching. I even heard a story about a pre-Cana session in which a teaching couple proudly told the engaged couples about their IVF use. Our clergy need to echo Cardinal Sean O'Malley's exhortation to shout loudly from the mountaintops against IVF. Here is what clergy should be saying.
Date posted: 2014-06-25
The sticker shows very directly, and concisely, what is at stake. Reprotech has not only moral dimensions but also practical effects that will shape the world in which all live. In the name of individual choice, reprotech is eclipsing notions of human uniqueness and equality of opportunity that most people, spiritual and secular, hold dear. That deserves public discussion, and even some confrontation.
Date posted: 2012-03-07
Individualist/consumerists don't apprehend that using reprotech is like building one's dream home in Yosemite Valley: it pleases the consumer and their family and friends, but it costs the culture something far more precious and universal, namely the notion that life is sacred. Don't expect a world in which the will of the sovereign consumer trumps all else to resemble the one in which your parents grew up, or to be a very good place to raise kids.
Date posted: 2007-10-30
Lately, seemingly seeing a window of opportunity following the death of the popular John Paul II, some commentators have asserted that the Catholic Church has an outmoded view of sexuality and that's it's time for a complete abandonment of Catholic teachings about sexuality. These commentators argue that students should be barred from hearing presentations advocating sexual abstinence. This is disturbing for several reasons.
Date posted: 2005-05-13
In a recent essay published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charles Krauthammer sets forth the twin notions that we should use otherwise leftover IVF embryos for research but that it's heinous to make embryos for research through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Date posted: 2005-03-23
The author falsely suggests that infertility is an idiopathic "mistake of nature." The demand for IVF arises largely out of the underpublicized sexually transmitted disease epidemic of the past thirty years. And she fails to observe the class/race bias that underlies IVF: many who use these technologies have waited a very long time to bear children as they have lived upper middle class lives and over 98% of American IVF users are Caucasians.
Date posted: 2005-02-08
Recently, genetic researchers announced that they had discovered the genetic basis of intelligence. Word is that certain genes cause those regions of the brain that confer intelligence to grow larger in some people than in others.
Date posted: 2005-01-10
The moral problems with embryonic stem cell research are wrongly dismissed with the argument that embryos are insignificant because they are, well, so small. Yet, if the embryos were not human, canine embryos would do. Moreover, if, despite their smallness, embryos did not have a unique identity, couples would not insist on the creation and implantation of only their, presumably special, embryos and there would not be big lawsuits when IVF clinics mistakenly implant the wrong embryos.
Date posted: 2004-10-23
Regarding responsibility, the alliterative title does not reflect the text. The book does not explain what responsibility is owed to whom or why. Overall, this is a very disappointing work. Although it is touted as a starting point, the Council's laissez-faire orientation and its low regard for unborn life seem to ensure that any subsequent analysis would be similarly tepid and, by then, even more untimely.
Date posted: 2004-10-23
In order to evaluate the morality of embryonic stem cell research, how science interacts with culture, and the future of biotech, generally, one should ask: where did they get all those frozen embryos that are about to be vivisected?
Date posted: 2004-05-18
Our society has odd, inconsistent notions about what is corrupt and what is worth protecting. Consider spectator sports and reproductive technology.
Date posted: 2004-04-04
Even if genetic manipulation never becomes possible, the eugenic age has already begun and is widely accepted by our consumerist society. If prospective parents don't like their unborn's genes, they can -- and often do -- end the life tested. In California, for example, 90% of fetuses diagnosed with Down's syndrome are aborted.
Date posted: 2004-03-29