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Most Christian medical ethics books on the market are written by clinicians, aiming to provide biblical answers to tricky issues. Sean Doherty's thought provoking booklet starts from a different premise. Doherty is an Anglican curate and has led a medical ethics course for undergraduates, which formed the basis of the...
This autumn, debate about patients paying to 'top-up' NHS care has dominated the media. In West Sussex, Carole Simmons' family paid privately for the drug Avastin, not available on the NHS. They believed it would prolong her life. However, their NHS treatment was withdrawn as a consequence, leaving them with...
In sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, the mortality rate in children under five averaged 169 deaths per 1,000 live births – 28 times the industrialised country average of six deaths per 1,000. [1] More than 500,000 women die each year in childbirth, most of them in developing countries. [2] Worldwide, 39.5...
This October sees the 40th anniversary of the passing of the UK Abortion Act, which came into force the following year. The anniversary gives all parties involved in the debate an opportunity to pause and reflect. In 2005, 194,353 termination procedures were carried out in England and Wales;[1] abortion is...
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph recently, Lisa Green from Margate, Kent, described how 35 weeks into her second pregnancy, her obstetrician broke the news that her baby had Down's syndrome, and encouraged Mrs Green and her husband to consider a termination. She went on to say,'My baby was fully formed...
Why Ethics Matters! In my second year at medical school we were given a series of ethics lectures. These were delivered by a variety of academics, many of whom were extremely eminent in their field. However, despite this and (probably more importantly) the exam at the end of the course,...
China has been one of the largest areas of Christian growth in the last century. Hudson Taylor, who founded the China Inland Mission in 1875, is perhaps the most famous missionary to work in this region, and the work of his organisation resulted in countless Chinese coming to know Christ....
All human enhancement technologies, start from the premise that we can overcome present limitations. A consistent desire is to develop anti-ageing technologies. Transhumanists take the idea a step further with the aim of engineering a 'better' human being. This could be via genetic enhancement or the development of human-machine cyborgs,...
Barely a month goes by without an announcement of a new development in biotechnology. The challenge for Christians is to keep abreast of such advances and respond biblically. In Life in our hands, biological scientist John Bryant and doctor/pastor John Searle attempt to outline some of the issues at stake,...
The launch of the Alive and Kicking campaign [1] at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on 26 September brought together a growing alliance of human rights groups formed in response to mounting evidence of growing public support for changes in UK abortion legislation. In a public poll carried out...
