http://sufficientscruples.com/blog Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues. Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:25:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Michelle Malkin now takes on the cause, and the rhetoric, of the misogynist anti-autonomy movement and its efforts to eliminate accessible reproductive healthcare. Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of prenatal, contraceptive, and abortion care in the US. In a country in which over 85% of all counties have no ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/06/04/malkin-spreads-more-stupid-shills-for-misogyny/ [For some reason I can't stop writing that as "Ass teh Ethicist", which may be appropriate.] I've decided to create a mechanism for reader input to the blog. I note the popularity of "open threads" on other blogs, but wanted something a little different here. I've also been worrying about the ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/30/new-feature-ask-the-ethicist/ A friend of mine, and occasional Sufficient Scruples commenter, Angus Johnston, has started a blog focused on US student activism: studentactivism.net. Angus is completing his PhD in History this semester; his dissertation is on the history of student activist groups from the 60s. He is also currently hooked into nationwide student activist ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/30/new-student-activism-blog-now-up/ tgirsch of Lean Left (and my own blogfather!) writes: I’m interested in the issues surrounding animal testing. I’m certainly not a member of the PETA crowd or anything, but at the same time, I’d certainly think we should keep such testing to a minimum, using it only where it’s necessary, useful, ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/17/ask-the-ethicist-animal-testing/ I really loathe PETA, for lots of good reasons. But that can take many forms, one of which is mocking, in appropriately childish fashion, PETA's own tactic for pressuring corporate chicken-torturers [sic]. They have a Web sign-generator site in which they encourage people to post comments about Kentucky Fried Chicken's practice ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/09/377/ There has been a kind of mini-carnival developing across the blogs lately, on the subject of sexual violence in prisons. It began with a recent LA Times Op-Ed on the subject by high-profile blogger Ezra Klein. It's good to see attention being paid to this issue; the number of bloggers ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/06/human-all-too-human/ Michael Gerson, Bush administration tool and terminal sufferer from Conservative Comprehension Disorder, continues his pattern of getting everything exactly backwards in his Washington Post-sponsored campaign of attacks on Barack Obama. The day after April Fool's Day (he must have missed a deadline), Gerson published another misinformed screed, this one claiming ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/03/obama-scandalizing-all-the-right-people/ "Reproductive Health Reality Check" is running an April Fool's Day blog carnival against "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" that mislead patients seeking abortion with deliberately deceptive tactics and false information. "CPCs" are medical fraud - there is no other description for it. And they are an increasing problem as abortion services are ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/04/01/april-fools-day-protest-against-healthcare-fraud/ I have posted elsewhere on my reaction to Obama's speech on race, and conservative reactions to it. But yesterday's column by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post moves me to comment here specifically on the provocative remarks about AIDS that have been quoted in this controversy, and their implications for ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/03/20/obama-and-black-distrust-of-the-health-professions/ There is a terrible tension in healthcare - medicine, especially - between the use of expert knowledge to serve and heal those in need, and its use to aggrandize those with the knowledge and to control, mold, dictate to or torture those who fall into their hands. Knowing what can ... http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2008/03/16/a-long-nights-journey-into-day/