Satan attacks identity, striving to separate us from who we are made to be. Mistaken identity is costly. In this week’s The Point blog, Dr. Andre Van Mol explores the concept of mistaken identity, the false identity of GLBT, and how it makes a difference in both medicine and science.

A recent report of a “serious blood disorder” corrected by “chemical surgery” sounds like a dream come true. Ian Sample’s article in The Guardian also made the process sound efficient and clean, even sterile. However, a look behind the headline reveals some important facts to consider. Dr. Joy Riley explores the ethical issues in this week’s blog.

The top 10 causes of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer, are Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), accidents, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, chronic renal disease and suicide. Some of these conditions are not preventable, so a more pertinent question is, what are the addressable risk factors for morbidity and premature death in general? And how do we focus on them with our patients?

Affordable Care Act architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl advocate barring from medicine all physicians who would decline a patient's demand for morally controversial services such as abortion. However, a "patient comes first" rule turns medicine into a patient dictatorship with no checks and balances.

My eldest child left for college this fall, having chosen to attend school in Scotland. Yes, that’s right. Scotland. It’s a long way away. It’s also a place I had never previously visited. We went on a family trip to Scotland in March—partly to visit the school he now attends, and partly to have one last bang-up family vacation before we became a family that no longer lives under one roof. On that trip, we had not one, but two, flat tires on our rental car. A consequence of our struggles driving on the left side of the road, perhaps?

Gene editing has potential for great benefit but also for great evil. In the medical realm, great advances are possible, but this dual-use technology also could be used to design children, weaponize biological agents or even alter or dehumanize our concept of humanity. Dr. David Prentice explores how gene editing can be dangerous for healthcare professionals and their patients in this week’s blog post.

According to new research by three expert physicians from Johns Hopkins, the most popular therapies to treat gender dysphoria in children are dangerous and biased. CMA Government Relations Fellow Anne Foster dives into this topic and how this should impact parents making their children’s health decisions.

Opponents of therapy for minors—and ultimately anyone—wanting to overcome undesired same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria have feverishly worked to enact bans against what is pejoratively labeled “conversion therapy.” Change therapy—be it called reparative therapy, sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) or the more recent nomenclature of SAFE-T (Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy)—has been in the cross-hairs for years, as I wrote about here, and the false claims against it have registered with the public and legislatures alike.

This blog originally appeared on the Tennessee Center for Bioethics and Culture blog. It is being republished with permission. For more information, visit www.tennesseecbc.org.

In our technological world, it’s easier sometimes easier to have conversations with computers than with people. Dr. David Stevens just spent 35-minutes having a conversation about end of life options with Emily, an artificial intelligence robot. He shares how this is bad for you, as both a healthcare professional and as a patient.

I am very much a can-do person—attacking the tasks in front of me with an astonishing willpower. We’re all like that, right? We wouldn’t have made it through medical school and residency otherwise! But when push comes to shove, I am not necessarily grateful or optimistic. I can tend toward the negative if left to my own human nature. In contrast, I know some people who just seem to have been born genetically positive and optimistic. They are resilient in the face of difficulty, always expect the best from every person or situation, and seem to have an easier time trusting God in their daily lives than I do. Maybe it’s just the outside appearance, but those positive people seem to enjoy life more than I often do.

There continue to be reports of new attempts to create life, sometimes labeled “synthetic” or “artificial” because the entity is not created the old-fashioned way, i.e., by fertilization of an egg with a sperm. The most recent report involved combining two different types of stem cells to form an embryo-like structure that was labeled “artificial.”