A few pieces came into my inbox over the past couple of weeks around organ donation and transplantation that caught my attention. While we don’t often write about this topic, it is within our concern of medical ethics as it relates to new technologies and developments in medicine. I’ve always been both fascinated and concerned about medical ethics in this domain. In my nursing days, I worked in university hospitals that did pediatric transplants (heart, kidney, liver, and bone marrow) so I very clearly saw the pros and cons of transplantation medicine as these issues were in front of us daily.
The first story in my inbox was a report about a woman who is the second person to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant. She had suffered from several heart attacks, years of diabetes, and was in kidney failure requiring dialysis just to keep her alive. Because of her serious health issues, she was deemed not to be a suitable candidate for a human organ transplant. Receiving a genetically modified pig kidney seemed to be her only chance of survival and she told herself, “You know what? I’m going to do it. I have to do it – for myself and for the rest of my family.” The previous report of such a transplant was in a 62 year old man. He was in end stage kidney failure when he received his genetically modified pig kidney.
Our Paul Ramsey Institute Fellows Are Changing the World
We founded the Paul Ramsey Institute in 2012 to build a training program for leadership in bioethics. Our alumni are truly changing the world, asking questions about what it means to be human, and how to maintain our humanity as medical technologies rapidly change. PRI fellow Matthew Rose published in First Things about the “Suicide of the Radical Right,” last month. He is also the director of the Barry Center at the Morningside Institute, which guides scholars in courageous academic research.
In March, two PRI alumni, Brewer Eberly and Ben Frush, published in Mere Orthodoxy, “Teach Us to Number Our Days: Health Anxiety and Faithful Anticipation”. Eberly and Frush are both clinicians, writing about how the current medical care system compromises the chance of dying in integrity with our values.
Our PRI Alumni do so much to advance the conversation around bioethics worldwide. At our annual Paul Ramsey Award Dinner, we gather to honor their work. This year’s Ramsey Fellow, Dr. Jeffrey Bishop will present, and we’ll also hear from our keynote speaker, Riley Gaines. We have just a handful of tickets remaining for the PRI Dinner, so make sure to reserve one for you and any guests as soon as you can!
Afraid to Be Female
Kallie Fell and Jennifer Lahl recently contributed to Fairer Disputations. Here’s an excerpt:
Why are our adolescent girls believing that they were born in the wrong body? Why is transgender identification trending higher and higher among adolescent girls? And why are these girls being rushed into medical transition?
These questions cannot be answered without listening to the stories of female detransitioners and desisters (those who transitioned socially, but not medically, and then reverted). To prevent more children from being harmed, we must try to understand why so many young girls believe that they are transgender.
In the stories shared in our new book, The Detransition Diaries, we see three interwoven yet distinct themes: untreated mental health concerns and related trauma (including sexual abuse), peer or social contagion, and fear of being female.
In this essay, we will focus on that last component: the fear of being female. Read the Full Article
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I'm Deacon John, age 86, ordained 4/25/87 as a Permanent Deacon for the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Deacon John's Space 