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In a helpful reminder that American politics are not the world’s only ongoing farce, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari felt compelled last month to deny rumors that he had died and been replaced by a clone. “On the issue of whether I’ve been cloned or not,” he said “I can assure you all that this is the real me.”

Exactly what a clone would say, no?

Although by all accounts there is (obviously) no actual evidence for what would have been a marvel of scientific achievement, what if he had been cloned? What if a sitting head of state of a constitutional democracy were replaced by a clone of himself during his tenure? Would the clone have a legitimate claim to power, or should the affair be treated as some kind of a high tech palace coup? Read More

Bioethical debates are often something of a dialogue of the deaf. A fundamental reason for this is that so much of bioethical theorizing is just rationalizing intuitions. But part of this problem is that we’re talking about different things. For a long time, bioconservatives have laid claim to a deeper understanding of what life is really about. These new technologies might look exciting to you, they say, but if we adopted them, we would lose the things about our lives that make them valuable, that make them human. Bioprogressives basically ignore these claims. They respond with statistics about how helpful technology X will be. They assume without explaining that life is about something else.

The bioconservatives are right that these questions matter, and it has been a mistake for bioprogressives to neglect them. It’s a mistake because if the bioconservatives are right about the meaning of life then they are right about the policy issues. Engaging on this question at least takes their argument seriously. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a mistake because the bioconservative theory of the meaning of human life is so obviously wrong. Read More

The Trump Administration launched the largest healthcare fraud takedown in history in June, charging over 600 individuals responsible for over $2 billion in fraud losses. This takedown, along with the previous summer’s (which had previously been the largest when it happened) has allayed concerns that the Justice Department would ease off healthcare fraud prosecutions as a form of white-collar, rather than violent, crime.

Indeed, former Attorney General Sessions committed to aggressive prosecution of healthcare fraud as part of the Administration’s response to the opioid epidemic. One change does seem clear, however: the Administration is prioritizing the prosecution of individuals, and scaling back on the prosecution of corporations. Read More