Prolife Resources: Life, Death & Dignity Medical Decision Making Guide

As medical technology has advanced, the realm of medical decision making has become increasingly complex. So many decisions about life and death that were once out of our hands have become emotional, ethical and spiritual quandaries for families. Is it okay to turn off the ventilator? What should we do about a feeding tube? Are we allowing the patient to die or are we killing him?

Human cloning failure While tens of millions of dollars have been spent on human cloning, researchers haven't been able to extract embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. A researcher from South Korea named Hwang Woo-Suk made headlines in 2004 and 2005 by claiming his lab was able to create cloned human embryos and extract embryonic stem cells from these embryos. His research was published in the prestigious journal Science, and he was lauded as a national hero in South Korea. This came to a screeching halt in December of 2005 when his university determined Hwang's research was fabricated. He was eventually fired in March of 2006. The South Korean government and private donors had poured tens of millions of dollars into this cloning research which didn't produce anything close to treatments.

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