With the Olympics soundly behind us and the rhythms of the fall launch of new television episodes well established, several reflections come to mind. An interesting thread below all of the accomplishments of the  elite athletes during the Beijing Olympics were concerns over doping of various sorts. Artificial enhancements, steroids, hormones. These are not new issues surrounding the elite athletic competitions of our day, but they increasingly are becoming difficult to evaluate.

How should the expectant couple react when they learn that their pregnancy will quickly end with the birth of an extremely premature infant?  These fragile infants – at the margins of viability – demand the extremes of life-sustaining care and typically remain in the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) for months.  After such a prolonged length of time, all involved – infant, family, and doctor – experience the gamut of emotions.  In a world filled with technological prowess and promise, what are parents to expect during t

At The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity’s 14th annual conference last summer—‘The Bioethics Nexus: The Future of Healthcare, Science, and Humanity’—world renowned Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga gave a plenary address entitled, “Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?”¹ In his address he reflected on some of the misguided assumptions on the part of both scientists and people of faith that serve to perpetuate this ongoing debate.

It is a sad, true, and often reprised story; the need for solid organ donations egregiously exceeds the supply. The palpable desperation experienced by those who wait, but also frequently die, has led to a variety of proposals aimed at increasing organ supply. Some of these remedies are just and some are not.

This presentation weaves together several of my ongoing and recent projects, including a computer ethics class that I teach regularly at the undergraduate and graduate level and a forthcoming article in the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (Blackwell), as well as elements from my dissertation work in theological ethics which focused on eschatological hope as a virtue.

The synapse is a specialized junction through which neurons – the brain’s fundamental cellular units – signal other cells.  An examination of patterns of neural transmission at the synapse provides an interesting small-scale paradigm for considering principles of effective and ineffective communication among and within human communities.  Following a general description of the synapse, this essay will draw parallels to larger realms of human ethical communication.