Scientists now have the capability of changing the world. Literally. A prominent researcher observed in a 2011 Science article that "our genome engineering technologies treat the chromosome as an editable and evolvable template". The advent of such technologies is disturbing from many points of view.

Until very recently scientific research contributed to the advancement of knowledge about the world around us without simultaneously creating tools for altering the characteristics and parameters of that world. None of these activities threatened the integrity of the biosphere — namely, that of planet earth. The ability to do so should give all of us, primarily scientists, pause, but they do not. As Hans Jonas observed, the deeds of biological engineering are irrevocable.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

Last week's historic three days of arguments before the Supreme Court on the merits of the Affordable Care Act provided many head-scratching moments. Those naive enough to believe that the case was actually going to be considered on constitutional grounds (this being the Supreme Court, after all) were rudely awakened to an apparent actual agenda of partisan politics and corporate interests.

Broccoli was a key theme, startling the 50 million Americans who may be able to purchase green vegetables at the local market but are unable to purchase badly needed health insurance. The welfare of health insurers was a second prominent theme, providing concrete evidence to those who posit that our nation is no longer a government of the people, but rather a "government of the corporation".

The outrage has been profound, including Op-Ed pieces in The New York Times, featured articles in The New Yorker, and commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.

First, the produce. During the second day of arguments, Justice Scalia attempted to define the market for health care. He said ". . . you define the market as food, therefore everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli." Chief Justice Roberts picked up the theme as easily as if he were choosing a ripe cantaloupe at his local farm stand. Roberts informed us that "a car or broccoli aren't purchased for their own sake, either." Broccoli is purchased to cover the need for food, we were sagely advised.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

It has been a very busy week at the Supreme Court. Three days of arguments on the various challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act each merited front-page coverage in The New York Times. SCOTUSblog, the blog of the Supreme Court, received more than 800,000 hits in three days, which was more than the site has received in its first 4 years of existence. Regardless of the court's final ruling (expected on June 28th), the active engagement in our robust democratic politics of so many Americans and interested parties worldwide bodes well for the future of our way of life. Separation of powers, first described and promulgated by John Adams (second president of the United States) in his treatise, Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies, is alive and well.

It's easy to experience the ebbing of America's power. Our national political scene is a toxic partisan shambles. We have been severely depleted — our blood and treasure have been unthinkingly squandered in 10 years of geopolitically useless war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are beset by real threats to our welfare and continued existence . . .

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

If we were not capable of autonomous thought and merely accepted and acted on what others told us, the future prospects of our communities, nations, and race would be bleak indeed. Fortunately, a few humans are capable of independent thinking, creativity, insight, and innovation. Every "benefit" of modern existence is a direct result of independent thinking in the form of scientific activity. Those of us who live in developed nations would be very hard-pressed to get through a day without readily available electricity and running water. Imagine living without automated transportation. Imagine living without television or cinema. Imagine living without a computer.

The study, investigation, and application of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and their combined disciplines such as engineering, agriculture, and architecture, have given us the world we inhabit. And yet in the United States close to half the population is being trained daily to believe that science is a bad thing.

For example, the theory of evolution (a classical example of the scientific method) has been under attack for several decades. A Gallup Poll conducted two years ago, around the time of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, revealed that only 39% of Americans "believe in the theory of evolution". Twenty-five percent did not believe in the theory and 36% had no opinion.

Of course, in order to be able to assess the value of a scientific theory, even from a high-level view, one has to have the ability to assemble facts and be able to recognize associations and connections among disparate threads and competing explanations. Sadly, it seems that such abilities, formerly mastered in grade school, are no longer accessible to the majority of our fellow citizens.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

For 500 years science has built an ever-increasing knowledge base, proceeding in fits and starts and yet moving inexorably toward improved explanations of the universe in which we live. But science has reached a crossroads. Thus society, too, is similarly positioned.

Years ago, during the Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial Revolution, Nature as such was vast and apparently infinitely replenishable. It was inconceivable that harm was being done to the environment on a large scale.

But as Inigo Montoya remarks to Vizzini in The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word [inconceivable]. I do not think it means what you think it means."

What was inconceivable then is now, appallingly, very conceivable. The outcomes of many scientific fields of inquiry have the potential to destroy the biosphere.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

In Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man [1974], philosopher and ethicist Hans Jonas observed that "Interference with the freedom of research is a grave ethical matter by itself, yet it is like nothing against the gravity of the ethical issues posed by the eventual success of that research."

These timely commentaries should be used as the framework for upcoming decisions regarding whether to proceed with research that has the potential to end human life as we know it, specifically, research which has created an animal-to-animal model of transmission for H5N1, the avian influenza virus.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

What does it mean to live in a democracy? In the United States, various freedoms are enumerated in the Bill of Rights. These precious freedoms include freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. The Fourth Amendment provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The Ninth Amendment states "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

A critical question is whether the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause includes the right to health care.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

The unsatisfactory outcomes Americans obtain from our notoriously profligate annual expenditures on health care are well-documented. A recent New York Times article explores an out-of-the-box explanation for the weak U.S. performance on these key measures of overall health.

 The study found that government funding of employment training programs, old-age pensions, and rent subsidies has an overlooked (at least in the U.S.) and fortuitous benefit. Possibly counterintuitively, countries with high spending on health care relative to social spending had higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies than countries that spent more on social services. Such spending serves self-interest, if we could only see it.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

A recent New York Times article cast a critical eye on one of the latest entries in the high stakes, high technology medical arms race. Proton beam therapy, the procedure under discussion, purports to treat cancer. But even though not a single randomized clinical trial has been done, Medicare is still willing to shower 50,000 scarce Federal dollars to providers for proton beam therapy for prostate cancer.

Considering that there are no studies evaluating the long-term outcomes, and no studies evaluating potential serious side effects of proton beam therapy, Medicare might just as well be burning $25,000 every time it pays for such a procedure. Worse, this is not an isolated scenario.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

The United States spent $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009. That's "trillion". With a "T". This expenditure represents outlays of $8100 per person and 17.6% of our gross domestic product (GDP). Exactly what are we getting for these prodigious sums? Not very much. Infant mortality, for example, is a key marker of how wisely a nation is spending its health care dollars. The U.S. ranks a dismal 41st. These statistics tell a very sad tale. Despite spending huge amounts of ever-scarcer personal dollars on health care, the key metrics for U.S. residents continue to demonstrate how badly America is underperforming.  Where are the U.S. monies actually going, if not toward developing and providing effective means of health care delivery?

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.