Science and life’s inviolability
Chris Barbara, from Doctors for Choice (May 6), attacks the claim that a fertilised embryo is a human person, saying this cannot be scientifically proved. He even states the opposite: “It would be more helpful to consider embryos for what they are: a precursor to a human person.”
Is it a ‘scientific fact’ that they are not a human person, such that one should feel no qualms about aborting them?
While it is an obvious (‘scientific’?) fact that embryos normally grow to behave as persons, there is no obvious ‘scientific’ marker of the point when personhood sets in. Personhood remains mysterious to ‘science’ but, in law and ethics, we give it great weight. For Barbara, too, the taking of personal life seems to be a red line.
Cooper Tire to support Ronald McDonald House Charities through Aligned in Hope
tirebusiness.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tirebusiness.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Time to consider a soft lockdown
While a full lockdown may be counterproductive at this stage, it may make sense to encourage people to work from home, reintroduce measures against group gatherings, and extend the ban on bars to restaurants: at least, until cases start declining substantially
3 March 2021, 7:42am
There is no other way to look at it: Malta has now entered a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic; and the same strategies we used in the past, can no longer be expected to work today.
Among those strategies was a rigorous method of contact-tracing, which aimed to identify and isolate carriers to prevent the virus from spreading.
He insisted the vaccination programme, which started just after Christmas, was advancing as planned.
“Whereas other countries had vaccinated 1% of the population, Malta’s percentage stood at 2.7% and is one of the countries with the highest reach in Europe,” Fearne said on TVM’s Xtra on Thursday night.
He revealed that more than 13,000 individuals would have received the coronavirus vaccine by the end of the week.
Fearne said that an additional 13,000 Pfizer vaccines have been retained to be able to administer the second dose in 21 days’ time to people who have already been inoculated.
As Malta enters the third week of vaccination, Fearne said another shipment of 15,000 vaccines is expected on Monday and that deliveries would increase exponentially in the weeks ahead.
vimarsana © 2020. All Rights Reserved.