Professor argues for a profound rethinking of conscience rights

Mary Anne Waldron offers three solutions for legal quagmires

The B.C. Catholic

Alistair Burns

An argument in favour of changing how citizens approach freedom of conscience and religion was presented May 2. Mary Anne Waldron, a professor of law at the University of Victoria, spoke to an audience of 80 in Holy Name of Jesus Parish Hall in Vancouver.

Her lecture was the first event co-hosted by the Catholic Physicians’ Guild of the Archdiocese of Vancouver and the St. Thomas More Catholic Lawyers Guild.

She asked the crowd to ponder why “we protect conscientious and religious freedom, when it is so often inconvenient, may seem unfair, and often offends others.”

The law professor declared perhaps many would prefer a world “in which our (specific) view prevailed” on major legal problems: abortion, euthanasia, and sexual moral codes.

Freedom of conscience and religion rights, she asserted, should allow the participation of all citizens in debates on social policies and norms, “protecting the minority against tyranny by the majority.” [Full Text]

NHS to give sex change drugs to nine-year-olds: Clinic accused of ‘playing God’ with treatment that stops puberty

Mail on Sunday

Sanchez Manning, Stephen Adams

Children as young as nine will be given controversial drugs on the NHS to prepare them for sex-swap surgery, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The treatment, which halts the onset of adulthood, is aimed at youngsters who believe they are trapped in the wrong body. But critics accused the clinic offering the puberty- postponing injections of ‘playing God’.

‘I think many people will be horrified at the thought of a nine-year-old being provided with a drug that effectively stops them developing and maturing naturally,’ said Conservative MP Andrew Percy.

Others insisted that undisputed research shows that the vast majority of under-16s who are troubled about their gender do not go on to take the drastic step of surgery. Many turn out to be gay, but no longer feel confused about whether they are male or female.

Although the gender treatment is reversible, there are concerns about the long-term effects on brain development, bone growth and fertility.

The drugs, known as hypothalamic blockers, stunt the development of sexual organs so less surgery is required if a child chooses to change sex after reaching adolescence. . . [Full text]

Doctors reluctant to give young women permanent birth control

Chicago Tribune

Julie Deardorff

When Lori Witt began pursuing a tubal ligation at age 27, she said physicians refused to even discuss it with her, telling her she was too young and might change her mind about having children.

For more than a year, Witt tried to get sterilized. Finally she went with her 28-year-old husband to a military medical clinic overseas, where Witt said he was given a vasectomy with few questions asked.

Decades after sterilization became broadly available to women in the U.S., some still have trouble obtaining one of the safest and most effective forms of birth control.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says nobody who seeks sterilization should be denied. But some women say the reality can be much different, especially for younger women and those without children. . . [Full text]

Austrian historians studying another informed consent debacle from the 50s

Bioedge

Michael Cook

There seems to be an unending trickle of revelations from the 1950s and 1960s about the practices of doctors who still had not learned the Nuremberg Code. The latest comes from Vienna, Austria, where researchers deliberately infected hospitalised children with malaria in the hope of finding a cure for syphilis.

An historical commission began studying the issue in 2012. It appears that between 1955 and 1960 about 230 orphaned children at the Hoff Clinic, at the Vienna University Clinic for Psychiatry and Neurology, were experimented on without their consent. Afterwards the injection the children had high fevers for two weeks and for another 20 years experienced intermittent fevers. No one appears to have died from the treatment. A complete report will be submitted next year.

Malaria therapy for syphilis may sound peculiar, but in 1927, in the days before antibiotics, Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg received a Nobel Prize in Medicine for refining the technique. He and others observed that high fevers killed the malaria parasite. This saved the patient from general paralysis and “idiocy”, but left him with fevers. However, these could be treated with quinine, so the risk seemed acceptable.

This article is published by Michael Cook and BioEdge.org under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation to Bioedge. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

New execution protocol similar to doctor-assisted suicide recommended

New York Post

Lindsey Bever

Days after the botched execution of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett, a bipartisan committee studying the death penalty has recommended a new one-drug lethal injection method to kill quickly and “minimize the risk of pain or suffering.”

The committee, formed by the Constitution Project long before the Lockett execution, urged states to administer an overdose of one anesthetic or barbiturate to cause death – the same method used in doctor-assisted suicides. (To read the report, click here.)

This method would replace a three-drug lethal injection protocol currently used by most states that employ the death penalty. . . [Full text]