Word: ethicist
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Last week another call for death with dignity-one certain to provoke a sharp ethical debate-appeared in the new issue of the bimonthly journal The Humanist. Entitled "A Plea for Beneficent Euthanasia," it bears such diverse signatures as those of French Biologist Jacques Monod, Situation Ethicist Joseph Fletcher and CORE Founder James Farmer. The document recommends not only the "passive" euthanasia now widely advocated, but "active" euthanasia as well: direct action to speed the death of a dying patient-an act that is technically murder. (No country has yet legalized euthanasia, though in some nations a compassionate motive...
...WHOSE RIGHT TO LIFE? Some ethicists are not especially concerned about pinpointing the moment when human life begins. Philosopher Hans Jonas, who teaches at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, emphasizes rather that "a mother-to-be is more than her individual self. She carries a human trust, and we should not make abortion merely a matter of her own private wish." A secular ethicist, Jonas believes that society has a "social responsibility" toward pregnant women: it must protect the "mission of motherhood against the clamors of individuals or of social movements. To give this mission over completely...
...Ursula Niebuhr later became head of Barnard College's religion department. The Niebuhr teaching dynasty also included his late brother, eminent Yale Ethicist H. Richard; his late sister, Hulda, who taught education at McCormick Seminary; and his nephew, Harvard Theologian Richard Reinhold Niebuhr...
...scientific curiosity team up to preserve life so well that the world faces a population crisis. Moreover, by extending the lives of those with defective genes, science increases the chance that damaging genes will be passed down to ever-larger portions of succeeding generations. Germany's pre-eminent Protestant ethicist, Helmut Thielicke, notes that men must recognize how "the act of compassion to one generation can be an act of oppression to the next." Thielicke argues that men must be willing to make hard choices. If society intervenes to keep alive the hereditarily ill (as he believes it should), then...
Perhaps the most crucial problem dealt with in the essays is whether the young fetus is "tissue," as is often argued by those favoring abortion, or "human life," as abortion foes contend. One line of reasoning offered by Princeton Ethicist Paul Ramsey, a Methodist, is pointedly modern. Ramsey contends that science itself now offers evidence of very early "human" characteristics in the fetus, such as discernible brain waves at eight weeks. The findings of genetics, says Ramsey, suggest a much earlier date. Since the individual's unique genetic code, or genotype, is established at the moment of fertilization...