The Arrow's Path

I had a question posed to be that asked if getting a blood transfusion could ever be a mortal sin.  This falls into the category of Catholic moral ethics that discerns the difference between ordinary means and extraordinary means in terms of medical care. Generally as a Catholic you have the obligation to pursue ordinary means of medical care both for yourself and for others, particularly those you have a specific fiduciary duty to care for, namely children, etc.   This is where ethics comes in because with the huge advancements in medical care in the last 50 years, the goal post has shifted in the medical profession as to procedures that are now generally considered ordinary means which at one point would have been in the extraordinary means category. So, there is a lot of grey area within the medical profession and even among Catholic theologians in terms of what is ordinary means and what is extraordinary means.   Part of the problem with medical ethics an...

I ran across this very bizarre article on CNNSI.com about stem cell research and sports medicine. Particularly, the article is a first person account of a former pitcher's attempt to basically rebuild his arm after injury through a strange concoction of stem cell therapy and PRP therapy. I have read through the article more than once, and I still don't know what I think about, other than to say that I think it brings up a whole host of medical ethics questions. From a sheer medical standpoint, the whole procedure sounds almost fantastical, to the point of being some combination of crackpot medicine and science fiction. A scant $5000 for a miracle one time therapy that can allow a washed up pitcher to regain throwing ability in the 90+ MPH range in six weeks? That seemed kind of out there to me, but there was just enough logic to it that maybe there is medical merit to the procedure. I'm not a doctor, so I can't really speak to that other than from a common sense ...

There's a very interesting piece of sports writing here  by Michael Rosenberg concerning Violence in Football that is worthy of a read. CNNSI is a little paranoid about quotes and plagiarism, so I won't quote it directly. However, the basic gist of the article, as I understand it, is to pose a moral and ethical question of when does a sport (in this instance football) become too violent to watch as a fan in good conscience? That is an interesting question that I have wrestled with off and on for many years. I don't particularly like hockey because all out fist fights are a common part of that game, and players are seldomly ejected. They go to the penalty box, but usually they get back into the game at some point. If hockey would immediately eject any players fighting, then I would be more likely to get into hockey. I like the actual game itself, at least if I can watch it live. (Watching hockey on TV is another matter entirely.) Having said that, I don't think fisti...