> Issue Briefs

“Going to Die Anyway”: COVID-19 Deaths of the Elderly are No Laughing Matter

Posted: May 25, 2020
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

There are, of course, competing viewpoints about how states should end the coronavirus lockdowns, with some urging greater caution while others think it’s time to get the economy and life open again, and fast. Given the uncertainties, such disagreements are … Read

COVID-19 Vaccine and Fetal Tissue

Posted: April 24, 2020
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

As reports emerge of a likely “second wave” of COVID-19 outbreaks expected this Fall, and with such outbreaks the possibility of extended or intermittent lockdowns through the end of the year, if not longer, the need and demand for a … Read

Tips from Modern Psychology for Coping with Corona’s Isolation and Anxiety

Posted: April 21, 2020
By: Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D.

No one anticipated last Easter that we would be home, a year later, involuntarily missing the Holy Week services; nor were countless parents prepared to be ‘homeschooling’ their children, albeit with some heroic efforts by educators to support the task … Read

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Ethics of Triage

Posted: March 26, 2020
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues in Italy, many hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, necessitating difficult triage decisions that can seem like choosing who lives and who dies. In the United States, already some hospitals and caregivers are overburdened, with expectations … Read

Coronavirus and the Ethics of Stockpiling

Posted: March 13, 2020
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

Given the spread of COVID-19, it’s unsurprising that people are stocking their pantries and closets with food and medication, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes. Supply chain disruption has already resulted in shortages of some drugs and medicines with … Read

A Hard Truth: IVF is Not Moral

Posted: January 24, 2020
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

In the past days, several news outlets have noted the “demographic bomb” facing much of Europe. With below-replacement rates of fertility, many European countries risk an acute shortage of workers and tax-payers needed to sustain their economies and the welfare … Read

No Religion Needed: The Moral Horror of Assisted Suicide

Posted: December 27, 2019
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

In the past few days, there has been a dispute within Roman Catholic circles over comments made by Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia concerning his willingness to accompany a person undergoing assisted suicide. Other leaders of the Church took quite a … Read

Google and Violating Patients’ Privacy: It’s Worse Than It Appears

Posted: November 27, 2019
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

Even though the phrase “do no harm” doesn’t actually appear in the Hippocratic Oath, there’s something Hippocratic about Google’s “unofficial motto” and corporate conduct code, “don’t be evil.” Or, at least, until Google jettisoned the phrase from its code in … Read

The Immorality of Happiness?

Posted: November 21, 2019
By: R. J. Snell, Ph.D.

Many of the debates in bioethics are really about competing visions of happiness. For example, if happiness is a mental-emotional state of good-feeling, then negative or bad feelings are tantamount to unhappiness, and an ethical system which forbids actions which … Read

Alternative Aims of Science: How Agendas Harm the Suffering

Posted: October 1, 2019
By: Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D.

When a scientific journal of a vaunted organization such as the American Medical Association (AMA) publishes research, there is a natural tendency to consider the findings to be reliable, valid and worthy of one’s attention and consideration. But as in … Read

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