What if embryonic DNA could be extracted from amniotic fluid and information from that DNA could be used to build a high probability composite of what the embryo will look like as a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and beyond? DNA phenotyping, also known as molecular photofitting, is a process of predictive modelling linking genetic traits and … Read more
We are all familiar with the current impasse on abortion. On the one hand, we hear the pro-life group, usually appealing to religious and ethical principles, decrying abortion as homicide, pure and simple. On the other, we are confronted by the pro-choice group, usually appealing to considerations about women’s rights, zealously defending a woman’s right … Read more
Time for your Friday morning links: In the Caritas Christi Health Care deal in Boston (where the Catholic hospital group was just sold to Cerberus Capital Management), how much is their Catholic identity worth? 3 percent of the purchase price. Pius XII just got a movie, and now John Paul II has… a musical? For … Read more
It’s refreshing to remember, from time to time, how grateful I am to live in this day and age. Even while biotech labs routinely turn out fresh horrors, the very DNA of our food is casually tortured into an unrecognizable state, and Nancy Pelosi keeps several female Senate pages in a state of suspended animation in her basement, hooked up to … Read more
This is a neat story: The remains of a soldier killed at Pearl Harbor are finally going home after having been unidentifiable for 68 years. The family was able to help experts positively identify the body by providing a DNA sample for comparison . . . from the letters he had mailed home to his … Read more
A friend recently put it to me that the Church has a Galileo Complex. Terrified by the historical narrative of the Church’s resistance to and persecution of science, Christians are averse to challenging “scientific” claims. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? By John Lennox Lion Hudson, 192 pages, $14.99 A friend recently put it … Read more
Following up on his last column, Mark P. Shea argues that what unites Catholics with Muslims — and the rest of the human race — is our sense of the sacramental in the created world. Atheists tend to make treacherous allies in the Clash of Civilizations. Just when Catholics sidle up to our godless friends … Read more
My husband is paranoid. The other day, I was about to leave for a quick run on our peaceful, tree-lined, country roads when he stopped me to ask, ”What are you bringing for protection?” Protection? What on earth was this man talking about? “I’ve got a couple of these,” I offered, holding up two of … Read more
The better title for Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (or at least the more accurate one, given the self-stated goals of his new book) would be Why There Almost Certainly Is No God. Paring back all the typical Dawkinsian rhetoric, that is all he really attempts to prove. The God Delusion Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, … Read more
Early last December, Vatican archaeologists uncovered what they believe to be the tomb of St. Paul in Rome. Tradition had it located under the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, and that is just where they found it. Of course, at this stage, the researchers can make no firm conclusions. There’s little that can … Read more