Do you want to know the latest information and news about today's important healthcare topics? Join the conversation with The Point, CMDA's blog focusing on breaking news stories in bioethics and healthcare. CMDA's experts contribute to the blog and also recommend additional resources and information.

The purpose of this blog is to stimulate thought and discussion about important issues in healthcare. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily express the views of CMDA. We encourage you to join the conversation on our website and share your experience, insight and expertise. CMDA has a rigorous and representative process in formulating official positions, which are largely limited to bioethical areas.

Archived Articles

App Blogs

Knowing the Will of God

How do you ascertain God’s will for your life? This is one of the greatest existential questions asked by followers of Christ, the young in particular. It is also one of the most profoundly misunderstood. We may be taught that there is a divine roadmap for our lives, known to God yet unknown to us. We desire to know it for two reasons. First, we seek to please God and be good stewards. Second, we believe following his divine plan will maximize our earthly joy and blessing, but He offers no objective way of knowing it. What then, does that say about God? He created a divine master plan for us to follow, but we have to pry it out of Him? What sort of God would do that, and why? What if we make the wrong decision?
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Identifying Healthcare Professionals Who May No Longer Be Able to Care for Patients

As Christian healthcare professionals, God has granted us the high privilege and responsibility of serving others through healthcare. Part of this responsibility is that of maintaining clinical knowledge and skill in order to provide high quality care to our patients. If we lose some of our skills due to trauma, physical or mental illness, or due to normal aging, this may not always be optimally possible.
App BlogsCOVID-19

Trust in Public Health

WND recently published my op-ed designed to highlight the benefits of trusted doctors and faith-based organizations communicating on public health issues. I also noted what I considered to be several significant failures of government public health messaging.
App BlogsCOVID-19

The World in Need

When John Donne wrote “No Man Is an Island,” he was lying on his sickbed, thinking, perhaps, it would be his deathbed. When he heard the church bells tolling for a person recently deceased, it got him thinking. His life­—everyone’s life—was diminished by the death of that unknown person. We are all connected.
App BlogsCOVID-19

On Faith and Fear

During a recent urgent care shift, a young welder presented with a metal foreign body in his eye. If you work in emergency medicine, urgent care or ophthalmology, or if you weld yourself, you are already aware of this occupational hazard. I was not aware of it prior to starting work in urgent care, but I must admit that it makes any dreams I may have had of learning to weld, thereby empowering myself to do more of my own home repairs, much less attractive. Tiny hot flecks of metal landing on the human cornea quickly embed themselves and become difficult to remove. Left there for a few days, they begin to rust, leaving a small rust ring on the cornea after the metal itself is removed—a rust ring which then has to be removed with a tiny drill called an eye burr.
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No Time for Complacency, Speak Up for Ethical Science

Well, that didn’t take long. As predicted, the parade of challenges to human dignity and human life discussed not long ago has already started to come to pass.
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Vaccine Resistance and Public Health Messaging

"I’m still a zero’: Vaccine-resistant Republicans warn that their skepticism is worsening") that examined the vaccine hesitancy of conservatives.
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This is Advocacy: Our Work Begins and Ends with God

Some would say it started earlier this year in January when the 2021 legislative session began in most states. Some would say it started with our increasingly more “live and let live” culture. However, the iniquity started before any of us were born.
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New Study Addresses Sexual Minorities Who Reject LGB Identity

A new study authored by a socio-politically diverse team of psychologists evaluated a religiously diverse population sample of varied sexual identification and found that sexual minority people who reject LGB identification have positive outcomes that contradict the expectations of both minority stress and sexual identity development theories.
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The Return of the God Hypothesis

In last Saturday’s New York Times, Christian columnist Ross Douthat asks, “Can the Meritocracy Find God?” “The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion,” writes Douthat. Nor is he sanguine for the prospects of that occurring. Douthat postulates two primary obstacles. First, “a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life.” Second, an entrenched anti-supernaturalism: “The average Ivy League professor, management consultant or Google engineer is not necessarily a strict materialist, but they have all been trained in a kind of scientism, which regards strong religious belief as fundamentally anti-rational, miracles as superstition, the idea of a personal God as so much wishful thinking.”
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The Incredible Impact of a Humble Man of Faith

In a previous blog, I recommended John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center, and BreakPoint, his daily blog. The Colson Center has several formats for outreach including the Colson Fellow program, weekly podcasts, daily email briefings and Wilberforce Weekend. The Colson Center takes on many of the most pressing issues of the day and thoughtfully discusses ways in which we as Christians can engage our culture. As I said in that earlier blog, if you stop reading this right now and explore the Colson Center options, I will have succeeded in pointing you to a good path for improving your Christian walk.
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The Equality Act Targets the Faith and Medical Communities for Ideology-Based Prosecution

The Washington Examiner recently published my op-ed on the radical Equality Act. This ideologically coercive and discriminatory bill, which has already passed the House and now is on the Senate calendar, will radically impact your professional career and your ability to live out your faith. The commentary is below, followed by excerpts of a CMDA letter to U.S. Senators and of written testimony submitted by several CMDA members.