In the mid-1990s, a group of UN officials and nongovernmental organizations gathered to formulate a strategy to promote a controversial international social policy agenda by reinterpreting existing human rights treaties to give them new meanings. At the heart of this strategy was a four-step process to use the six UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies and an interlocking network of UN agencies, UN officials, and NGOs to create an international right to abortion. In the decade that has followed, UN member nations have allowed the strategy to develop to an extensive degree, despite the fact that it undermines their own laws. This study examines the reasons why the process has been able to advance, and analyzes the way the strategy has undermined the treaty monitoring system andchallenged the credibility of the international human rights regime.

Ethical concerns are motivating the search for alternative methods to obtain pluripotent stem cells without destroying human embryos. The supporters of these methods stress the importance of ensuring that the biological entities used in these alternative methods are not “disabled or sick human embryos.” In this article the authors argue that biological entities bearing anomalies or alterations that directly inhibit the appearance of neural activity (DIANA anomalies) share the moral status of human organisms fulfilling the clinical criteria for brain death. By contrast, in the absence of DIANA anomalies, the moral status of a person cannot be denied. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 7.2 (Spring 2007): 315–335.

Stem cell research is undeniably valuable and has generated excitement in the scientific community because of its potential use in developing new therapeutic treatments for chronic and debilitating diseases. Many researchers believe that the development of new human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines is necessary for success in this research forum. A review of hESC research based on the four principles of biomedical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice—reveals areas of ethical conflict. Specifically, the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence conflict with the destruction of human embryos in hESC research. Two other ethical approaches that may also be used to evaluate hESC research are the utilitarian and Kantian perspectives. Human embryonic stem cell research demonstrates a divergence from morality because persons (embryos) are treated as means rather than as ends in themselves. Using adult stem cells for research is a viable option that does not pose ethical concerns and yet answers the duty of beneficence that a moral obligation to humanity demands. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 7.1 (Spring 2007): 257–262.