Cutting-Edge Bioethics: A Christian Exploration of Technologies and Trends (Edited by Kilner, Hook, and Uustal, 2002)

Medical technology is aggressively expanding in ways that only a few years ago were imaginable only as science fiction. The human genome project, xenotransplantation (transplanting animal material into humans), cybernetics, nanotechnology (engineering on a molecular level), and stem cell research are just a few of the areas being developed in laboratories, and being debated in the public square. It is a debate that the church must seek to enter with a thoughtfulness honed by the truth of God’s word. Cutting-Edge Bioethics, an important voice in that debate, is the latest in a series of books from The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. The Center is a think tank exploring medical ethical issues from the perspective of Christian faith.

“New technologies promise vast improvements in health care and for the first time genuinely present the possibility of overcoming major disabilities such as blindness and paralysis. But at the same time these technologies may prove devastating: promoting loss or erosion of personal identity, tightening the new shackles of an ever more powerful technological tyranny, or even contributing to the destruction of our species.” This warning from the editors of Cutting-Edge Bioethics may sound like science fiction, but it is not. Read this collection of scholarly papers if you would like to listen in as serious Christians reflect on the issues involved in the new technologies and trends in medicine.