Donald Trump

Media outlets are reporting that Stanford scientists used AI to create an artificial virus. From the Wall Street Journal story:

Artificial-intelligence systems have been displaying some eye-opening new abilities in recent weeks: breaking out of their enclosures, hacking other companies, lying to people.

And now, for the first time, an AI model has created a new virus. A whole family of them, in fact.

In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford University and elsewhere said they successfully directed an AI model to create a collection of simple viruses that only infect bacteria and pose no threat to humans.

These particular viruses may not be dangerous, but what about the next ones scientists manufacture? What about potential attempts to test their virulence in humans? The approach in the Stanford lab sure sounds like a new form of gain-of-function research to me.

Anthony Conwright argues in the New York Times that the Civil War should not be called by that name because it never was so called during its fighting.

Conwright is angry that back on the anniversary of Appomattox, President Trump marked the event by quoting Ulysses S Grant’s magnanimous statement that the “rebels are our countrymen again.” Never mind that Grant was carrying out Lincoln’s explicit policy of magnanimity toward the rebels as a means of reuniting the country (“with malice toward none, with charity for all” and all that).

Even more ridiculously, Conwright argues that calling the conflagration the “Civil War” somehow diminishes the evil of slavery abolished after the North’s victory. From “It Wasn’t a ‘Civil War:’ It Was the Slaveholders’ Rebellion“:

As Mr. Trump and his allies try to whitewash the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, we should return to an older and far more accurate name for the Civil War. We should once again call it the Slaveholders’ Rebellion. If a country unquestioningly adopts language that obscures its bloodiest crimes to absolve their worst perpetrators, how can we expect successive generations to remember the new assaults on democracy without deploying equally forgiving language?

AI gets most of the attention, but biotechnology may be even more impactful on the human future. Indeed, I think it is the most powerful technology since the splitting of the atom — perhaps even in history, as it has the potential to literally alter the human race or any cell/organism — which could cure diseases or unleash an unstoppable pandemic. Attention must be paid. Some biotechnologists are intent on pursuing radical biotechnologies — whether to eliminate disease, or as I expect to become the bigger, more remunerative draw, to create designer babies enhanced to be smarter, more beautiful, or otherwise made to order — regardless of the ethical questions. A long piece in The Guardian illustrates the stakes we Read More ›

Approximately 10-15% of U.S. couples of reproductive age experience infertility. One response is to pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is fraught with many negative ethical and practical implications. Another way is to get to the root cause of infertility. Shouldn’t that be the MAHA way? President Trump expanded access to IVF with his February 2025 executive order. In October, he lowered costs for IVF and other fertility treatments. While IVF does indeed “create” more babies, it comes at a steep physical, emotional, and ethical cost for couples (for an in-depth discussion of these and other issues relating to IVF, please see my podcast episode with Emma Waters on Bioethics Babe). At its heart, IVF circumvents infertility by moving procreation Read More ›

After restricting funding for primate research for ethical reasons, the National Institutes of Health has followed up by banning funding of fetal tissue research. From the NIH press release:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced a new policy ending the use of human fetal tissue in NIH-supported research, marking a significant milestone in the Trump Administration’s efforts to modernize biomedical science and accelerate innovate.

Effective immediately, NIH funds will no longer be used to support research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions. The policy applies across the NIH Intramural Research Program and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts.

We have to remember the gruesomeness of some of this research: For example, the experiments in which the scalps of 20-week aborted fetuses were grafted onto rodents.

Israel is under continual attack and terroristic threat. But some Israeli West Bank settlers are engaging in violence of their own, against a Christian Palestinian village called Taybeh, the last wholly Christian town in the West Bank and, historically, the place to which Jesus withdrew (Ephraim) before his Passion according to the Gospel of Saint John. Three village priests — one Greek Orthodox, one Catholic, and one Melchite Greek Catholic — have issued a public letter begging for help: On Monday, July 7, 2025, settlers deliberately set fire near the town’s cemetery and the historic Church of Saint George (Al-Khadr), dating back to the 5th century — one of the oldest religious landmarks in Palestine. Were it not for the Read More ›

I am rather amazed at the hysteria within the science sector because of DOGE investigations, proposed changes in status quo funding, and the canceling of some truly crackers scientific studies, such as researching transgender hormone injections in animals. But there is definitely some wailing and gnashing of teeth. A Nature survey found that 75 percent of the journal’s readers answering the online survey are “considering leaving the country.” From the Nature story:

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

Mainstream bioethics discourse is often just progressive politics by a higher-brow name. Now, the Hastings Center — the world’s most influential bioethics think tank — has published an advocacy essay by Loyola University bioethicist Mark G. Kuczewski, who urges his colleagues to convince hospital administrators to thwart the attempts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest illegal aliens at their institutions. Kuczewski laments the “fear” that the enforcement of immigration law is supposedly instilling in “immigrant communities,” somehow forgetting to note that whom he is really discussing are not immigrants in general but those here illegally. From “Supporting Patients and Students Who Are Immigrants: What to Do and Why Most Bioethicists Won’t Do It”: A devastating wave of fear now permeates immigrant communities. The rhetoric Read More ›

The execrable gender ideologue Admiral Rachel Levine is no longer in government. That’s great news in the long run for children with gender dysphoria, because the new administration wants to actually protect these disturbed minors. Accordingly, President Trump today signed an executive order protecting such children from being subjected to often irreparable body-altering “gender-affirming care.” From the order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation:”

Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.

Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

Excellent.

President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its Covid failings, allegations of being soft on China, and the disproportionate share of funding borne by the United States. There is even more wrong in how WHO leaders have wielded their influence. In recent years, the organization has not just been about promoting public-health internationally, but also in using its clout to impose woke cultural agendas on the world — including areas that have traditional moral values — and in seeking to construct an international technocracy. Item: WHO sought to force a radical abortion regime on the world by allowing abortion through the ninth month and curtailing the right of conscience by doctors to Read More ›