Looks like the brave new world has finally arrived. The website BeautifulPeople.com reportedly “booted out 5,000 people who gained weight and were deemed too ugly to remain members”. (R & D Mag)

For a while there, things didn’t look too good for British writer Simon Singh. The best-selling author of the science histories Big Bang and Fermat’s Enigma knew he was heading into controversial territory when he switched tracks to cowrite a book investigating alternative medicine, Trick or Treatment? What Singh didn’t count on, however, was that writing a seemingly innocuous article for London’s The Guardian newspaper about especially outrageous chiropractic claims—one of the subjects he researched for the book—would end up threatening his career. The British Chiropractic Association sued Singh, hoping to use Britain’s draconian libel laws to force him to withdraw his statements and issue an apology. Losing the case would have cost Singh both his reputation and a substantial amount of his personal wealth. Such is the state of science, where sometimes even stating simple truths (like the fact that there’s no reliable evidence chiropractic can alleviate asthma in children) can bring the wrath of the antiscience crowd. What the British chiropractors didn’t count on, however, was Singh himself. Having earned a PhD from Cambridge for his work at the Swiss particle physics lab CERN, he wasn’t about to back down from a scientific gunfight. Singh spent more than two years and well over $200,000 of his own money battling the case in court, and this past April he finally prevailed. In the process, he became a hero to those challenging the pseudoscience surrounding everything from global warming to vaccines to evolution. It’s not necessarily a role he sought for himself, but it’s one he has embraced—he’s currently touring the world, talking about his case, libel reform, and how important it is to make sure scientists can speak truthfully and openly. Wired spoke with Singh about his case and the struggle against the forces of irrationality. (Wired Magazine)

During the Nuremberg trials, convened at the end of World War II, lawyers for the German defendants, politicians accused of crimes against humanity, and physicians accused of euthanasia and barbaric medical experimentation offered the rationale of “kriegsraison” to exculpate their clients. The defence argument was that in conditions of all out war, those prosecuting the war can and must do whatever it takes to win. The Nuremberg tribunals summarily rejected kriegsraison as a defence. (The Lancet)

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally. (New York Times)

New Blackfriars (Volume 91, Issue 1034, July 2010) is now available by subscription only

Articles Include:

• “Public Reason in Bioethics” by Nicholas Tonti-Filippini

President Obama has appointed a new Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, replacing his predecessor’s President’s Council on Bioethics. Like the previous entity and similar ones before it, the group will advise the president on a wide range of difficult, controversial scientific issues. Previous presidential bioethics advisory panels have considered issues such as cloning and human embryonic stem cell research. (Washington Post)

The program is taught by the faculty of Loyola’s Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics & Health Policy, part of the Stritch School of Medicine, which is located on the campus of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. Faculty members all have extensive experience in clinical ethics and are experts in a variety of disciplines including medicine, law, canon law, medical humanities, philosophy and public health theology and policy. (Medical News)

Stem Cells (Volume 28, Issue 4, April 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Law, Ethics, Religion, and Clinical Translation in the 21st Century - A Discussion with Pete Coffey” by Majlinda Lako, Alan Trounson, and Susan Daher; 636-638.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (Volume 13, Number 2, April 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “A Royal Road to Consequentialism?” by Martin Peterson, 153-169.
• “Health Care, Capabilities, and AI Assistive Technologies” by Mark Coeckelbergh, 181-190.
• “A New Instrumental Theory of Rights” by James Sherman, 215-228.

Nominations Open Now for

2010 Manuel Velasco Suárez Award for

Excellence in Bioethics

Nominations are being accepted for the Manuel Velasco Suárez Award for Excellence in Bioethics now through June 30, 2010, 5:00 p.m. EST, at www.pahef.org/mvs.  This award, presented by the Pan American Health and Education Foundation (PAHEF) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), recognizes a scholar whose proposed research in the field of bioethics promises to produce a demonstrable output and enhance the scholar’s capacity to progress in the field.  Professors, scholars, and researchers affiliated with an institution involved in the study of bioethics are invited to nominate a scholar in bioethics residing in Latin America or the Caribbean.

During a discussion of ethics classes being trialled in 10 New South Wales primary schools, Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen said he didn’t believe ethics without religion was possible but is it and, if so, how do you create rules for living outside of religion? (ABC Sydney)

We all have a stake in how public bioethical debate is structured. Indeed, it may be that we should care more about how it is structured than about what is decided on any given occasion. The conversation and the arguments never reach a definitive end. But a public conversation that leaves policy making to elected officials who can be held accountable, a conversation that is designed to focus, not just on means, but also on the ends or goals of biotechnological advance provides all citizens an opportunity to reflect upon who we are as a people and how we may best structure our common life on matters of great moral significance. (GEN)

US President Barack Obama last week announced the full membership of his bioethics advisory council, unveiling a more diverse body and one that is likely to have a greater impact on policy than its predecessor. (Nature News)

Since the founding of their church 131 years ago, Christian Scientists have been taught to avoid doctors at all cost. It is a conviction rooted so deeply in church dogma that dozens of members have endured criminal prosecution rather than surrender an ailing person to what they see as the quackery of medical science. (New York Times)

EACME Annual Meeting 2010: “Empirical Ethics”

September 16-18, 2010

Oslo, Norway

The Section for Medical Ethics, University of Oslo, and the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) will organize the EACME annual conference. The four central topics include: Empirical Ethics and Methodology; Empirical Ethics and Clinical Practice; Empirical Ethics, Benefit Sharing and Research; Empirical Ethics, Biopolitics and Human Rights.

Conference Website: http://www.med.uio.no/iasam/sme/seminar/eacme_2010/

A provincial network that has helped patients, health-care workers and health regions with difficult medical ethics questions could fold because of funding cuts. Supporters say Alberta Health should reinstate funding to the Provincial Health Ethics Network. They say the loss will lessen the province’s ability to thoughtfully deal with ethical dilemmas likely to increase with an aging population, new technologies, more experimental drugs and growing chronic health problems. (Edmonton Journal)

From January 16, 2002, to June 11, 2009, I served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. Chaired first by Leon Kass (2001–2005) and then by Edmund Pellegrino (2005–2009), the Council met thirty-six times. Of its original eighteen members, nine served throughout the life of the Council. When asked, as I often was, whether I enjoyed the experience, my standard answer was: “It depends on what day you ask me.” (The New Atlantis)

Bioethics increasingly has implications for many areas of people’s lives and it is important to identify common ground around which controversial discussions can take place, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told hundreds of students today in New York. (UN Center News)

The Florida State University Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine & Law has been established to promote cooperation between two professions that often view each other warily. The center, a joint effort of Florida State’s College of Medicine and College of Law, is based in the medical school. Marshall Kapp, previously the Garwin Distinguished Professor of Law and Medicine at the Southern Illinois University Schools of Law and Medicine, has been named its director. (Newswise)

The advances in biotechnology have given rise to a discussion concerning the strong emotional reaction expressed by the public towards biotechnological innovations. This reaction has been named the ‘Yuck-factor’ by several theorists of bioethics. Leon Kass, the former chairman of the President’s council on bioethics, has appraised this public reaction as ‘an emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it’.1 Similar arguments have been forwarded by the Catholic Church, several Protestant denominations and the Pro-Life movement. Several bioethicists have, however, opposed the idea of a disgust-based morality. [Premium (Journal of Bioethics)]

Distaste for science is sometimes a function of its findings: it doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear. So it is with free will. Many would like to believe that our powers of conscious choice transcend cause and effect, but as it explores the workings of the mind, scientific inquiry strongly suggests otherwise. So much the worse for science, some say, as they cast about for non-scientific proof of the contra-causal freedom they think essential for human dignity, moral responsibility, and all else that gives life meaning. (NPR)