Transhumanists, according to Bostrom, anticipate an era in which biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being.

The end result would be a new form of “posthuman” life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans.  (CNN)

he federal government is giving almost $9 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to further investigate a major stem cell discovery from last fall. Three projects are aimed at putting last fall’s discovery into action – the idea that reprogrammed human cells can be converted to embryonic stem cells without getting embryos involved. (River Falls Journal)

The more interactive, automated informed consent process helps patients retain more information and allows them to ask questions as they come up. In addition, some doctors have found that the automated process provides an extra defense against liability. (iHealthBeat)

Doctors should stop routine prostate cancer screening of men over 75 because there is more evidence of harm than benefit, a federal task force advised Monday in a new blow to a much-scrutinized medical test. (CBS News)

Woman paid $50,000 to Korean lab to turn skin cells from pet into embryos. (MSNBC)

Catherine is a little girl condemned by genetic disease to a gruelling regime of treatment. She could be released from it by a sibling, but the sibling is not yet conceived. (BBC)

Today’s neuroscientists need more than laboratory skills to discover how the brain works. Professor Judy Illes from the University of British Columbia describes the ‘critical challenges’ that the ethics of neuroscience - neuroethics - presents.

“These aspects involve every aspect of human life,” she said Tuesday 15 July at Europe’s major neuroscience conference in Geneva. New technology, particularly brain imaging, has the potential to predict not only neurodegenerative diseases, but to delve into our thoughts and reveal patterns of behaviour.

Whilst brain imaging is a powerful tool in research, medicine and surgery, its use in, say, the law courts to prove a criminal’s intentions are very much more controversial.  (FENS/Swiss Society for Neuroscience from Medicexchange)