Why we should think twice about genetic engineering

No one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods. Rich people and holders of powerful positions seem to need friends…. In poverty also, and in other misfortunes, people think friends are the only refuge. —Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, Book VII Having heard so m

Twenty years ago I worked in Zimbabwe. It was a joy. Filling in for a philosophy professor at the major seminary in Chishawasha, not far from the capital city, Harare, I encountered a group of uncommonly eager and bright students, thrilled to discuss the history of the early church, intent on seeing

Under the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas, I hold that a soul is a unifying formative source of any living being’s activities and purpose. Thus each individual plant or tree has a soul, a formative cause of its integrated development in its life-activities of growth, healing and reproduction.

On the day I write this column, The New York Times has published side by side on its front page two articles that embody the divergent possibilities of our future in Iraq. The United States, contrary to all previous statements, will join Iran and Syria in talks on Iraq. As the Iraq Study Group had e

Time magazine’s person of the year was a mirror: Behold YOU. Yourself. You can do it. You did it. Be all you can be. YouTube. You are the star. It is a proclamation of pure, absolute narcissism. The world ends at my face. Me. My space. My autonomy. I rule my world. Perhaps the deepest moral ch

A newly fashionable atheism has emerged in public discourse. Religious faith, in this account, is not only quaint; it is dangerous. In a recent conference titled Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, religion took a beating. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate

The elections of 2006 were largely seen as a referendum on the policies of President George Bush, especially the military adventurism and looming failure in Iraq. Having learned from the defeat at the polls, the president accepted the resignation of his secretary of defense the following day. Perhap

Almost 30 years ago when the field of medical ethics was still in its youth the Dominicans Benedict Ashley and Kevin O rsquo Rourke published Health Care Ethics To see how that professional discipline is now moving into its maturity one need only inspect Ashley and O rsquo Rourke rsquo s conside