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Michael Cook
Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. He also writes a bioethics column for Australasian Science. |
Nobel laureate marketing lifespan test
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
The Australian winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine is leveraging her discovery to market a test which will help people know their true health status and biological age.
Alzheimer's and the euthanasia debate
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
Negative attitudes towards Alzheimer’s disease are undue influence on the euthanasia debate, claims an Australian bioethicist.
The man who didn't die
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
A Montana man brain cancer diagnosis shows how difficult it is to determine whether or not a person has a “terminal illness”. Mark Templin was awarded US$59,000 for expenses and emotional stress after his doctor wrongly told him in 2009 that he had only six months to live.
Fear factor: first pre-emptive removal of prostate
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
Following the highly publicised pre-emptive double mastectomy of Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie, it has emerged that a 53-year-old British man has become the first in the world to have a pre-emptive removal of his prostate.
Jinxed? Problems with landmark paper on human cloning
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
Last week we reported that researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University had finally cloned human embryos and successfully extracted embryonic stem cells.This was a feat which scientists agreed was possible but was proving unexpectedly difficult. The last time the claim was made, by South Korean Hwang Woo-suk in 2005, it turned out to be a colossal fraud which embarrassed leading journals and dampened enthusiasm for “therapeutic cloning”. Unfortunately, the most recent paper has also been criticised for image duplication, evoking the nightmarish Hwang scandal
Dan Brown’s latest thriller tackles transhumanism
Michael Cook | 25 May 2013 |
Inferno: Robert Langdon is back with a globe-trotting thriller in which the symbologist has to decode clues left in a map of Dante’s masterpiece by a recently-deceased evil genius before one-third of the world perishes. Oops, we are about to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that the master of transmuting highbrow trivia, European travel guides and clunky prose into dollars has framed transhumanism as the most dangerous threat to the future of mankind.
Al-Jazeera examines Australia's tussle with euthanasia
Michael Cook | 23 May 2013 |
This 25-minute documentary by Al-Jazeera presents a balanced view of the campaign for euthanasia in Australia. No presentation will satisfy everyone, but this one, "Licence to Kill", presents articulate folk on both sides of the question. Definitely worthwhile.
Jolie’s Choice
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie was hailed this week for her bravery in revealing that she has had a preventative double mastectomy.
DSM-5 to be launched next week
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) goes on sale on May 22 after more than a decade of revision by 1,500 experts.
Are bioethicists a “priestly caste”?
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
Is bioethics compatible with democracy? This is not a question that surfaces very often in policy debates featuring prestigious bioethicists. However, in a provocative column in The Guardian, Nathan Emmerich, a young bioethicist, asks whether bioethicists are turning into a priestly caste:
Is surgical castration is an ethical option for sex offenders?
Michael Cook | 18 May 2013 |
The German and Czech governments allow sex offenders to be surgically castrated – provided that they give informed consent to the procedure. This has put them at loggerheads with the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). It has denounced the practice as degrading treatment which should be ended immediately.
Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers are being force-fed
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, about 100 are on a hunger strike. About 20 are being force-fed, according to the New York Times. About 40 medical staff have arrived to ensure that the detainees are fed.
Georgia searches for solutions to gendercide
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
India and China are not the only countries with lop-sided sex ratios due to sex-selective abortions. Georgia, a former member of the USSR in the Caucasus with a population of about 4.5 million, has a distorted sex ratio at birth of 114 boys to 100 girls
Belgian Nobel laureate dies through euthanasia
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Euthanasia claimed its most famous victim last Saturday. At the age of 95, Belgian Nobel laureate Christian de Duve was killed with a lethal injection. He died in his home, surrounded by his four children.
Bad news for fans of organ markets
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Two German economists have published in Science the results of an economic experiment which supports a pessimistic view of organ markets.
Cracked Open, a journalist's memoir of IVF
Michael Cook | 11 May 2013 |
Journalist Miriam Zoll has just released a personal account of her involuntary involvement with the reproductive technology industry, Cracked Open.
A blaze of controversy revisited
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
In late February last year, two Italian academics working at Monash University in Australia flicked a match into a highly combustible pile of old abortion debates, caricatures of pointy-headed academics, news-hungry journalists and recycled protest posters about Peter Singer.
An attack on academic freedom?
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
Some bioethicists who feel at home in the utilitarian common room of the Journal of Medical Ethics described the imbroglio as an attack on academic freedom.
“After-birth abortion” already exists in the Netherlands
Michael Cook | 4 May 2013 |
Dr Eduard Verhagen, a paediatrician at University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands, says that, in his experience, infanticide is sometimes preferable to second-trimestre abortion.
Five convictions for Kosovo organ trafficking
Michael Cook | 2 May 2013 |
Five people have been convicted of organ trafficking in Kosovo by the European Union court which runs the legal system in the quasi-independent territory.
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| michael@bioedge.org