Introduction
April 25, 2018Friday, June 9, 1978. A day not to be forgotten. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of President Kennedy, most Mormons will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing…
DiaBLOGue
Herbs, Beeswax or Horsetail | LaDean Griffin, Is Any Sick Among You?, and LaDean Griffin, No Side Effects: The Return of Herbal Medicine
April 25, 2018These two books from our own Mormon culture are typical of a large number of similar publications in the lay press. Well meaning people who have found that modern medicine cannot cure everything are too…
Heavenly Bound | Raymond A. Moody, Life After Life
April 25, 2018Medicine has rediscovered that all life ends in death, and now seems marginally willing to explore the possibility of life after death. Raymond Moody, a psychiatrist trained in philosophy, writes one of the more straightforward…
Human Cloning: Reality or Fiction? | David M. Rorvik, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man
April 25, 2018More important than the book itself is the furor it raised. When In His Image was published, people were forced to ask some provocative questions: Is human cloning actually possible? What are its social, moral…
Among the Mormons: A Selected Bibliography of Recent Works on Mormons and Mormonism
April 25, 2018Mormonism throughout much of its rather brief, history has stirred emotional responses from a large portion of the American populace. What began in the 1830’s as persecution and a forced flight to the West has…
Lyn
April 25, 2018December 14: Lyn really managed to get herself worn down. Lyn, Mom, Adina and I drove to Salt Lake City to see three naturopaths. The first one diagnosed Lyn’s condition as a collapsed left lung.…
Polygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy
April 25, 2018Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…
Intersexes in Humans: An Unexplored Issue in LDS Traditional Beliefs
April 24, 2018Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113
In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.
Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines
April 24, 2018Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.
Mormon Health
April 24, 2018The experience of Daniel and his friends in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon was, perhaps, the first published instance of a controlled clinical trial. This preliminary success led to an extension of the trial diet for a three-year period, at the end of which Daniel’s group not only demonstrated fairer countenances, but superior performances on the king’s equivalent to an I.Q. test.