John Lantos
This is not a three-parent child
A strange paper recently appeared in Nature, reporting that some (“fewer than five”) babies had been born in the UK following a...
top of page
Bioethics Consulting
Research & Writing
Lectures & Webinars
Search
John Lantos
- May 7
- 3 min
Sister Senators and South Carolina Supremes
Last week, I wrote about the Republican women who stopped a life-begins-at-conception ban on abortions in South Carolina. They have...
980
John Lantos
- Apr 28
- 3 min
Dobbs and Democracy in "Realville"
Roe v. Wade created a strange situation in American democracy. Politicians could posture against abortion without having to face the...
150
John Lantos
- Apr 14
- 3 min
Who's Afraid of Ectogenesis?
The idea of “ectogenesis” – growing babies outside the womb - has fired imaginations for over a century. In 1923, biochemist JBS Haldane...
180
John Lantos
- Apr 14
- 3 min
Is Pregnancy A Disease?
Philosopher Dan Brudney explored the implications the simple statement that pregnancy is not a disease. The paper is particularly...
400
John Lantos
- Mar 31
- 3 min
Outsourcing empathy
Sharma and colleagues report a randomized clinical trial of human-only or human+AI respondents to people who sought counseling on a...
2274
John Lantos
- Mar 22
- 3 min
Will AI replace doctors?
Will AI replace doctors? Well, it depends what you think doctors ought to be or do. If a doctor is supposed to competently read an EKG,...
1000
John Lantos
- Mar 18
- 3 min
Two old doctor books that won't die
From the time it was published, critics of Samuel Shem’s The House of God have been either predicting its death or trying to explain away...
310
John Lantos
- Mar 4
- 4 min
The false-negative phenotype
We generally don't think of phenotypes as being "positive" or "negative." With genomics, that is changing. We can now imagine the...
260
John Lantos
- Feb 26
- 2 min
Who (or what) is a bioethicist?
Quick, tell me: who, among the following people, is a bioethicist? Amy Guttman, Jodi Halpern, Pedro Almodovar, Renee Fox, Jodi Picoult,...
920
John Lantos
- Feb 16
- 3 min
Trans politics brings down PM Sturgeon
Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon says that she resigned because she was exhausted by the pandemic. Others think that the battle...
521
John Lantos
- Feb 3
- 2 min
Trying to Defend the Living World
Richard Powers is the most scientifically savvy novelist at work today. He was one of the first people in the world to have his genome...
210
John Lantos
- Jan 30
- 3 min
High cost and low expectations
Beverly Gage writes about being a patient with a disease so rare that she might be the only person in the world who has it. After...
1010
John Lantos
- Jan 20
- 3 min
Hunger Games
Looking for some dark comedy? In the opening scene of The Whale, Charlie (Brendan Fraser) clutches his chest in pain while jerking off...
450
John Lantos
- Jan 19
- 3 min
Did COVID kill Jacinda Ardern?
Democratic governments that impose vaccine mandates are often wildly unpopular. Protests against vaccine mandates were strong in 19th...
150
John Lantos
- Jan 12
- 2 min
Paul Offit vs. NEJM on COVID Boosters
In a Perspective essay, Paul Offit writes, “We should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by...
1260
John Lantos
- Dec 30, 2022
- 7 min
A humane society after Dobbs?
O. Carter Snead’s book, What it Means to Be Human, is really two books. One is an idealistic program for cultural renewal. The other is...
870
John Lantos
- Dec 17, 2022
- 5 min
Loving him meant letting him die
There is a complex episode near the end of Rob Delaney’s shockingly readable memoir, A Heart That Works, The book is about his son Henry...
560
John Lantos
- Dec 12, 2022
- 2 min
Caution about COVID vaccines for kids
Five separable but interrelated issues should inform policies about COVID vaccines for kids. First, what is the goal? Vaccine doesn’t...
90
John Lantos
- Dec 8, 2022
- 5 min
Nights of Plague and Lessons of History
Orhan Pamuk’s novel Nights of Plague feels ripped from the headlines. A deadly infectious disease that started in China is threatening...