Are the macroeconomics of healthcare (as we practice it today) reasonable?

Possible Points to Contemplate for Debate:

Point: It costs approximately $600,000 for a kidney transplant. Does it make sense to save one life for the cost of a kidney transplant when many others will suffer from lack of care?

Point: If there are limits to how much we would pay to save a single life, who decides the limits?

Point: Assigning a dollar value to human life raises disturbing issues, but before deciding categorically that doing so is obnoxious and immoral, one must ask what alternatives are available to one who aims to make moral choices with limited resources. The cost-benefit analyst insists that a rational, mathematical. procedure is likely to produce greater benefits than a decision influenced by emotional considerations that may be psychologically powerful but morally irrelevant. So, for example, the cost-benefit analyst may decide that, given the resources available for health care, it is "too expensive" to treat elderly cancer patients, but his justification will be that the same amount of money could do more good somewhere else; for example, vaccinating children. It is important to realize that he is not saying that treating older patients is morally right but impractical; rather, he is saying that funding these programs would be morally wrong because they would not create benefits (e.g., QALYs) as great as could be created if the resources were used differently. For cost-benefit analysis, and for utilitarianism generally, morality requires using all resources—not just money, but limited time, as well—in the most efficient way, the way most likely to produce the greatest benefits with the least expenditure. (Of course a separate and important ethical question is what proportion of our total budge should go to health care programs.) Elias Baumgarten, Ph.D “Introduction to Bioethics”

Point: [Jeremiah 1:4-10] Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’

Point: [Mark 1:32-34] That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/weekinreview/09marsh.html

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html

Is it permissible for humans to create artificial life forms?

Topic for Friday, May 28:

Possible Points to Contemplate for Debate:

Point: Bioethicists have reacted with caution to the announcement that scientists in the US have created the first synthetic living cell. Dr Craig Venter's team announced their landmark discovery in Science magazine. They have succeeded in transplanting synthetic DNA for a bacterium into a host cell.

Point: Who would be responsible for any (positive or negative) actions any such life forms take?

Point: “We have now accomplished the last piece on the list that was required to do what ethicists called "playing God". What that literally means is the capacity to be a creator. There are a number of people who will find that very fact in itself terrifying. Many believe there ought to be certain areas that ought to be left alone. This is one of those areas where you can do things vastly before you consider their implications.

There are obviously very important ethical issues. This work has proceeded without any real regulation at all. The bad guys are out there. Weaponising all sorts of things will be much, much easier.

The science is flying 30,000 feet over the public's understanding of the ethics. Scientists can be their own worst enemy by using words like "clone" or "synthetic life".

This isn't a case of rogue scientists, this is a group that is extremely well known, incredibly well respected. You are going to have to help scientists with education so this thing doesn't become a national or international threat. [That is] the way to fend off the Luddites that would say this and any other genetic research is awful - these people will be harder to fend off because more safeguards haven't been made.” Glenn McGee, Founder of American Journal of Bioethics and Francis Professor in Bioethics

Point: “They are doing significant modifications to the biological matter, but it isn't truly artificial life. Obviously when one engenders a new life form one can't be entirely certain what it's going to do, how it's going to reproduce. It could turn out to be virulent [although that's unlikely in this case].

Unesco and the UN do have bioethical oversight bodies. This does need oversight - you can unleash new lifeforms that could be quite dangerous.

We don't think you can create life. One can modify and manipulate already existing biological material. No-one [is] able to create life from scratch. There have been claims before that life has been created.” John Haas President of the National Catholic Bioethics Center

Point: [Genesis 1:26]

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.

Point: [Psalm 3:13-18]

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end*—I am still with you.

http://www.cbhd.org/content/bioethics-future-human-dignity

http://ethics.sandiego.edu/resources/cases/Detail.asp?ID=84

http://www.all.org/abac/cwk002.htm

Is there ever a circumstance when the death penalty is appropriate?

Point: If there were a “Life sentence for real” would that change your opinion about the death penalty? That is, if there were no chance for parole for a life sentence.

Point: Both the Catholic and Episcopal traditions are opposed to the death penalty.

Point: “After 20 years on (the) high court, I have to acknowledge that serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country.” - Sandra Day O'Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Appointed by Ronald Reagan)

Point: Genesis 7:1-5 (verse 4 especially)

1 Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Point: Numbers 15:32-36
32 When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. 34 They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp.” 36 The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Point: John 8:2-11 (Jesus’ opinion of the death penalty)

“Law is not refuted” 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Point: Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/