Faculty Bibliography

One of the Houston octuplets was born 12 weeks premature. The rest are at least 10 weeks early. Each of the babies is very tiny. Their organs are barely developed. Size matters where babies are concerned. There is a very real possibility that some or all of the babies will die. There is an even greater possibility that some or all of them will go through life with severe or moderate disabilities directly traceable to their prematurity. And their prematurity is a direct result of the decision to create a pregnancy of many babies

HEALTH AND Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala has proposed a change in the regulations governing who gets a transplant. If her proposal becomes law, organs would be issued from a single national waiting list, with the sickest patients getting top priority

The benefits of rushing to attempt human cloning are far harder to see. So it is clear what the goal of regulation and legislation ought to be: to buy us the time to ensure the safety and proper oversight of human-cloning work. Put a moratorium of a few years on any effort to create a human being by means of cloning

Richard Seed, the retired physicist who scared the nation to death earlier this month with his talk of creating a brave new biological world, has inadvertently become the poster boy for regulating cloning

Finally, the Food and Drug Administration has approved an emergency contraception kit, using the same pills now used for birth control. The kit -- marketed by Gynetics Inc., of Somerville, N.J. - - has a pregnancy test that a woman must use first since, if she is already pregnant, emergency contraception will do nothing to change that. But if she is not yet pregnant, emergency contraception will cut the chance of becoming pregnant after unprotected sexual intercourse from 8 percent to 2 percent

Granted, when the subject is the love life of a president, a British princess or an underage prostitute on one of the TV tabloid shows, we cannot shut up. But that is talk about strangers whose habits, peccadilloes and moral failings have no immediate bearing on what we do in our own bedrooms. When the conversation turns to our own sex lives, to the sexuality of our spouses, children and siblings, we have much less to say

Americans have a very difficult time dealing with sex. Granted, when the subject is the love life of a president, a British princess or an underage prostitute on one of the TV tabloid shows, we cannot shut up. But that is talk about strangers whose habits, peccadilloes and moral failings have no immediate bearing on what we do in our own bedrooms. When the conversation turns to our own sex lives, to the sexuality of our spouses, children and siblings, we have much less to say