Free Republic

Forcing children who are not at risk for serious illness to receive a vaccine of marginal benefit undermines confidence in legitimate vaccine programs.California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for schoolchildren age 12 and older — and other similar mandates popping up around the country — raises the question: For a patient population that predominately suffers only mild to no symptoms, is it ethical to coerce them to receive a vaccine that provides little benefit and causes rare but significant side effects?Why COVID-19 and Polio Aren’t The SameDuring the early 1950s, my parents waited and hoped that polio, an incurable,...

Man shot, killed in Chevron gas station shooting Senate approval extends transportation funding amid debate over infrastructure… Several San Francisco city departments have accepted gifts from restricted organizations — groups with which the city does business — and distributed those gifts to city employees, actions that undermine the city’s rules regarding gifts, according to a new report by the city’s Ethics Commission. The 41-page report released on Thursday details “problematic” conduct related to gifts, including the awarding of tickets to events such as concerts and shows and the receipt of benefits and funds to pay for private parties, dinners and...

Dr. Julie Ponesse, Professor of Ethics, University of Western, gives an emotional last lesson to her students in anticipation of being fired for choice to not take an experimental and unapproved Covid-19 vaccine. She was subsequently fired.

Concerns about ethical boundaries in scientific research are growing as reports surface about scientists creating three-parent embryos, hybridizing humans and animals and growing human brains. A new experiment out of the University Hospital Düsseldorf in Germany is raising more concerns after scientists said they grew human brain organoids, or small versions of human organs, that began spontaneously growing eyes, according to Science Alert. Scientists at the university said the rudimentary eyes recognized light and sent information to the brain. Though the discovery is disturbing, some scientists celebrated the discovery as a new avenue for research on human development. Here’s more...

After the 2016 election, a flurry of reports noted Donald Trump’s election was breathing new life into our decaying media industry now that they had important work to do, in a quest to save America from tangerine-tinged fascism. Via NBC News, here’s an update on how that’s working out at one of America’s prestige publications: Nicholas Thompson, the chief executive of The Atlantic, gave a presentation to employees last month in which he disclosed some uncomfortable truths about the state of the magazine. Subscription growth, which had skyrocketed in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic and the presidential election, had...

Throughout the world, scientific research and experiments involving ethical issues must first pass the scrutiny of ethics committees. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conducted many experiments in the field of biomedical and genetic engineering that break human ethical boundaries.China began implementing the Ethical Review of Biomedical Research Involving Humans on Dec. 1, 2016. However, 122 Chinese scientists who co-signed an open letter in 2018 to oppose gene-edited babies criticized China’s biomedical ethics review as a “sham.”In the United States, as ethical and moral regulations on animal research have become stricter, budgets and funding have tended to...

Government ethics watchdogs and art critics alike are voicing their concerns as first son Hunter Biden prepares for his first solo art exhibition this fall — where paintings from the former lawyer and lobbyist are expected to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000 and buyers will remain anonymous. “The whole thing is a really bad idea,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told the Washington Post. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of...

No matter how bad things get in this country, you can rest assured that we will always find a way to sink even lower. From the very lowest levels of society all the way to the very highest levels of society, the level of depravity that we are now witnessing all around us is absolutely stunning. At this point, most Americans do not have any sort of a solid moral foundation, and it shows. Everyone is just basically doing whatever seems right in their own eyes, and that has resulted in complete and utter chaos. We are a very, very...

While President Joe Biden promised that none of his family members would receive government jobs, that hasn't extended to his top tier of advisers Psaki was asked at the Monday briefing what safeguards the White House has in place to prevent preferential hiring of family members. 'We have the highest ethical standards of any administration in history,' Psaki replied. 'A number of ethics officials have conveyed that and we're proud of that... This is the most diverse administration in American history.' At least five children of his top aides have gotten jobs, according to a report Friday in The Washington...

“What’s an Abortion, Anyway?” begins a new children’s book by abortion activists Carly Manes and an illustrator who goes by the name Emulsify. But it never actually answers the question. Instead, the book, intended for young children, indoctrinates young minds with radical pro-abortion rhetoric that attempts to normalize the killing of unborn babies for any reason without limits. “Some people have abortions because they can’t take care of a new baby right now,” the book states, above an illustration of a mother holding a young child. Others because their “doctors say pregnancy could make them sick,” it continues next to...

A former ethics chief in the Obama administration has accused President Joe Biden of thumbing his nose at government ethics with the prevalence of family ties among his administration's hires. 'I'm sorry, I know some folks don't like hearing any criticism of him. But this royally sucks. I'm disgusted,' tweeted Walter Shaub, who led the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. 'A lot of us worked hard to tee him up to restore ethics to government and believed the promises. This is a a real 'f*** you' to us—and government ethics,' he added.

Now that Dr. Anthony Fauci is feeling the heat for funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology and covering it up, it's time to scrutinize his wife. Christine Grady, MSN, Ph.D., is Fauci's colleague at the National Institute of Health, where she serves as chief of bioethics and head of human subjects research at the NIH Clinical Center. According to the Center's website, Grady's contributions are "primarily in the ethics of clinical research, including informed consent, vulnerability, study design, recruitment, and international research ethics, as well as ethical issues faced by nurses and other health care providers."In a gushing...

‘People Are Afraid to Speak Honestly’ They meet once a month on Zoom: a dozen doctors from around the country with distinguished careers in different specialities. They vary in ethnicity, age and sexual orientation. Some work for the best hospitals in the U.S. or teach at top medical schools. Others are dedicated to serving the most vulnerable populations in their communities. The meetings are largely a support group. The members share their concerns about what’s going on in their hospitals and universities, and strategize about what to do. What is happening, they say, is the rapid spread of a deeply...

Letitia James has undermined herself, corrupted her high office, and debased the rule of law. Before Democrat Letitia James was ever elected Attorney General of New York in 2018, she vowed to exploit the immense powers of that high office to investigate and prosecute then-President Donald Trump for his business transactions. Never mind that James was not privy to any evidence or documents that the then-president had ever violated state laws as a real estate developer. Being bereft of facts did not deter her from accusing Trump of everything from "money laundering" to "defrauding Americans." She publicly denounced him as...

The USGA told Davidson on the same day that he had met the organization’s Gender Policy eligibility requirements and could now participate in the group’s championships. Plans to join LPGA Davidson, a 28-year-old social media employee for NBC’s Peacock division, which is part of the Golf Channel, wants the LPGA to make the same decision.

Before Covid-19 ravaged the world, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded coronavirus research that included work at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. The idea was to study the ability of such viruses to attack humans, but could a Fauci-funded experiment actually be the source of the deadly global infection? In an exhaustive account of the viral possibilities published this week by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nicholas Wade argues that the Chinese lab is the most likely source of the world-wide agony.

If you could cross a monkey with a human, what might that creature tell us? We are beginning to find out. In a pioneering and controversial experiment, scientists successfully created just such a hybrid: a chimeric combination of monkey and human cells, existing together in a living embryo that otherwise would never have been conceived by nature alone. Ethically fraught science? Yes. Mad science? No. While research into human-animal hybrids has a long and questionable history, in recent years researchers have pursued chimeric organisms to probe questions of biology that stand to offer significant gains in fields such as regenerative...

A distorted view of COVID control measures has become an obstacle for quality science, researchers reveal Researchers have found that preventing COVID-19 deaths has been elevated to a “sacred value” in society, such that those who question pandemic restrictions are morally condemned. Meanwhile deaths, abuses of power, and public shaming that occur in the name of “preventing COVID” are deemed acceptable. The unprecedented restrictions placed upon Western civilizations in 2020 would likely have been met with protest a year earlier. But, when issued in the name of COVID-19 mitigation, people are more likely to accept what otherwise might be regarded...

The Biden administration has waived ethics rules to allow a top Department of Homeland Security official to make policy in areas on which she lobbied for her former employer, Amnesty International. A memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget, dated Feb. 9 and released publicly on Friday, spelled out the rationale for waiving those rules for Charanya Krishnaswami, the senior counselor to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. "Without this waiver, the adjustments that would be necessary to maintain Ms. Krishnaswami’s recusal are anticipated to result in serious limitations and inefficiencies in the Department," acting OMB director Robert Fairweather...

Yes, they were feverishly working on a vaccine. But why were they not as frantically looking for a cure or treatment? And why were they continuous knocking down every possible treatment that was suggested? I knew something was amiss when the pandemic hit. I have four degrees in the field of psychology including a PhD. My years of training and experience were telling me something wasn’t right. My BS detector as all the best psychologists would call it kept going off. I just kept wondering why our National health leaders kept putting the burden of handling the spread on us?...