May 1, 2024
(Associated Press) – The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post … Read More
May 1, 2024
(Science) – When and how should text-generating artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT help write research papers? In the coming months, 4000 researchers from a variety of disciplines and countries will weigh in on guidelines that could be adopted … Read More
April 30, 2024
(NPR) – First, he and his team used skin cells from Timothy syndrome patients to grow neurons in a dish that carried the mutation. Then the team moved on to studying the mutation in brain organoids — living clusters of … Read More
April 30, 2024
(Wired) – China’s brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement. At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed … Read More
April 30, 2024
(Vox) – More than half a century ago, men of science and men of faith gathered together to unlock the mysteries of female fertility. The answer: urine from the brides of Christ. And lo, those nuns gaveth. All that urine, … Read More
April 29, 2024
(The Guardian) – Founded in 2005 and lauded by Silicon Valley, the Nick Bostrom’s centre for studying existential risk warned about AI but also gave rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism. Two weeks ago it was quietly announced … Read More
April 29, 2024
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (vol. 33, no. 2, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Bioethics Without Theory?” by Søren Holm “Pragmatism and Experimental Bioethics” by Henrik Rydenfelt “The Role of Exceptionalism in the Evolution of Bioethical … Read More
April 24, 2024
Research Ethics (vol. 20, no. 2, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “‘A Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’: A conceptual Framework for Equality of Opportunity in Patient and Public Involvement in Research” by Sapfo Lignou, Mark … Read More
April 23, 2024
(New York Times) – Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can … Read More
April 22, 2024
European Journal of Human Genetics (vol. 32, no. 4, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Uncertainties Experienced by Parents of Children Diagnosed with severe Combined Immunodeficiency through Newborn Screening” by Melissa Raspa, et al. “Surveillance of multiple … Read More
April 19, 2024
(PC Gamer) – When Borderlands Science was announced back in 2020 I thought it all sounded a little silly. Science? In my Borderlands? It struck me as a lot less likely than Dr. Mayim Bialik seemed to think. But it … Read More
April 19, 2024
The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 390, no. 13, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Recognizing Historical Injustices in Medicine and the Journal: Nazism and the Journal” by J.M. Abi-Rached and A.M. Brandt “Pragmatic Trial of … Read More
April 17, 2024
(Wired) – The untold, top-secret story of the British researchers who found the key to keeping humans alive underwater—and helped make D-Day a success. In my field of dive research, there’s one story from eight decades ago that blows the … Read More
April 15, 2024
(Wired) – Bussard is one of a small number of blind individuals around the world who have risked brain surgery to get a visual prosthesis. In Spain, researchers at Miguel Hernández University have implanted four people with a similar system. … Read More
April 15, 2024
BMC Medical Ethics has new articles available online. Articles include: “Exploring Health and Disease Concepts in Healthcare Practice: An empirical Philosophy of Medicine Study” Rik R. van der Linden and Maartje H.N. Schermer “How Stable are Moral Judgements? A longitudinal … Read More
April 12, 2024
(MedPage Today) – Rapidly expanding support for psychedelic agents in mental health treatment has introduced unique challenges and essential considerations in the design and implementation of informed consent processes, an analysis concluded. (Read More)
April 9, 2024
(New York Times) – A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the oldest and most esteemed publications for medical research, criticizes the journal for paying only “superficial and idiosyncratic attention” to the atrocities perpetrated in … Read More
April 8, 2024
(The Atlantic) – The most basic challenge in mating a brain and a computer is an incompatibility of materials. Though computers are made of silicon and copper, brains are not. They have a consistency not unlike tapioca pudding; they wobble. … Read More
April 8, 2024
(Quartz) – Brooklyn-based brain chip startup Synchron launched a registry Monday to recruit patients and healthcare providers ahead of a planned large-scale clinical trial. The company, a rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, produces a brain implant, known as brain-computer interface … Read More
April 8, 2024
The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy (vol. 49, no. 2, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Interventionism and Intelligibility: Why Depression Is Not (Always) a Brain Disease” by Quinn Hiroshi Gibson “Unfreedom or Mere Inability? The Case … Read More
April 5, 2024
(Axios) – The success of the world’s first pig kidney transplant could stoke large-scale clinical trials on implanting animal tissues in humans to help ease the organ shortage crisis. Why it matters: Demand for donated organs is vast as transplants … Read More
March 27, 2024
(Reuters) – A U.S. lawmaker involved in health policy has asked the Food and Drug Administration why it did not inspect Elon Musk’s Neuralink before allowing the brain implant company to test its device in humans. Reuters reported last month … Read More
March 27, 2024
(Undark) – In recent years, high-profile experiments implanting non-human organs into human bodies, a procedure known as xenotransplantation, have fueled rising interest in using brain-dead subjects to study procedures that are too risky to perform on living people. With the … Read More
March 25, 2024
BMC Medical Ethics has new articles available online. Articles include: “A Bioethical Perspective on the Meanings behind a Wish to Hasten Death: A meta-ethnographic Review” by Paulo J. Borges, Pablo Hernández-Marrero and Sandra Martins Pereira “Layered Vulnerability and Researchers’ Responsibilities: … Read More
March 21, 2024
(New York Times) – Before he died last year, Roland Griffiths was arguably the world’s most famous psychedelics researcher. Since 2006, his work has suggested that psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, can induce mystical experiences, and that those experiences, in … Read More
