Full-Contact Bioethics
Former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee had this advice for an aspiring journalist who had applied for work: “Even though you are still young, very young, let me give you some advice. When you write the editor of a newspaper for a job, other things being equal, you stand a better shot if you spell his name right.”
What sinks a job application also sinks a bioethics article. That is the conclusion to be drawn from a scathing review of an article in the journal Current Oncology. It triumphantly claimed to find a score of unsupported and false statements in a harsh critique of legalised euthanasia published last year.
The authors of the critique, all supporters of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada, come to the devastating conclusion that this “paper should not be given any credence in the public policy debate about the legal status of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada and around the world.”