Forum Posts by
Hilde Lindemann, PhD
- From Jackie and Me: A Plea for Opt-Out Organ Donation
Posted on July 14, 2015
Three weeks ago, my dear friend Jackie, a internationally recognized bioethicist in her fifties who lives in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, went to bed with what she thought was a bad case of flu. A few days later she was really ill, and her partner and another dear friend persuaded her to go to an emergency care clinic.… Read more
- Prenatal Dex: Update and Omnibus Reply
Posted on March 18, 2010
Our Bioethics Forum essay from a little over a month ago has already spawned three further essays. So we’ve asked the editors to indulge us in this single reply and update. To recap, in early February, we called upon scholars in bioethics and allied disciplines to join with us in expressing concern over the possible experimentation… Read more
- Fetal Cosmetology
Posted on February 8, 2010
There’s a common misperception that, now that the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money is gone, so are all the ethical problems with the way people with genital anomalies are treated. Not so. You may recall that Money lied about the life of his patient David Reimer (known as “John/Joan”), who as a baby had been… Read more
- Sound Familiar?
Posted on June 18, 2009
Not long ago, a group of bioethicists were chatting about a case that was worrying one of us. It concerned a family consisting of a mother, a father, and their profoundly cognitively impaired 20-year-old daughter, whom they cared for at home. Neither of the parents was capable of producing any more children, but for both… Read more
- Shotgun Weddings
Posted on August 30, 2007
The New York Times reports that the erroneous abortion of a genetically normal fetus instead of its twin with Down Syndrome has caused an uproar in Italy. What seems to be agitating people, though, is not the magnitude of the mistake that was made (as Wittgenstein once said in another context, “For a mistake, that’s… Read more
- Disobedience
Posted on May 31, 2006
Okay, the large signs in bars telling pregnant women not to drink alcohol were bad enough, especially when you consider that there is no medical evidence whatsoever that one or even two glasses of wine or beer a day does the fetus any harm. The woman would have to be falling-off-the-barstool drunk, repeatedly, in the… Read more
- To Be a Mother
Posted on March 6, 2006
On February 24, in a direct attack on Roe v. Wade, the South Dakota House followed the Senate in approving a ban on all abortions except where a woman’s life is at stake. Today, Republican Governor Mike Rounds signed the bill, which is almost identical to the Texas law that Roe overturned in 1973. According… Read more