February 28, 2011
Imagine that you are totally paralysed but still have all your mental faculties. You can communicate only through rudimentary speech or limited movements such as blinking or moving your eyes. You wouldn’t be happy, would you? It turns out that … Read More
February 28, 2011
At first glance it might appear that nanomedicine is irrelevant to surgery as it is practiced today, as surgery is generally concerned with the manipulation of decidedly macroscopic devices. However, surgery as a discipline is obviously not limited to clinical … Read More
February 28, 2011
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism recently described an experiment in which two student journalists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison tested how quickly they could “score” Adderall—a prescription stimulant designed to treat attention-deficit disorders, but often used by … Read More
February 28, 2011
The children of anonymous sperm donors are growing up, speaking out, and demanding rights in a forum fraught with controversy. When she was younger, Alana S. used to experiment and tell people her dad died when she was a baby and … Read More
February 25, 2011
CTs and MRIs routinely change the course of medical care, often for the better. But their use has become so routine that their lifesaving benefits are being increasingly overshadowed by the risks of overuse. Medical imaging is the fastest-growing source … Read More
February 25, 2011
Professor Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, was just in the news again, thanks to an article in the Melbourne Herald Sun titled “Only breed smart babies: Ethicist.” The responses, from various corners … Read More
February 25, 2011
Patients in Scotland must be treated within 12 weeks according to new laws unanimously agreed by MSPs. The Patient Rights (Scotland) Bill also introduces a legal right for patients to complain about their treatment. (BBC News)
February 25, 2011
Vaccine injury is a tricky thing to prove — medically and legally. So it was inevitably controversial when the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday against the parents of Hannah Bruesewitz, 18, who suffered seizures and permanent brain damage after receiving … Read More
February 25, 2011
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia will decide whether it is constitutional for the government to take DNA samples from people arrested but not convicted of a crime and keep the specimens on file like fingerprints. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
February 25, 2011
Fourteen Vietnamese women, seven of them pregnant, have been rescued from an “illegal and inhuman” surrogate baby breeding ring in Thailand, officials said Thursday. (AFP)
February 25, 2011
Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the … Read More
February 25, 2011
Are designer babies a danger to the middle class? Should we, as a society, specially breed children for submission to the Achievatron to defeat Chinese mothers and live up to the genetic “Sputnik Moment†in which we find ourselves? Will … Read More
February 25, 2011
Taipei District Court Tuesday gave probations to three men who had imported women from Uzbekistan into the country to serve as surrogate mothers. According to the court, the main suspect surnamed Kuo, desired mix-race babies and used reasons such as … Read More
February 25, 2011
Unacceptable death rates of laboratory animals have forced AgResearch to end its cloning trials. But the science agency says it will continue to create more genetically engineered animals using new research methods. (Stuff.co.nz)
February 25, 2011
If asked whether we’d steal, most of us would say no. Would we try to save a drowning person? That depends — perhaps on our fear of big waves. Much research has explored the ways we make moral decisions. But … Read More
February 25, 2011
The first question we must ask is this: is surrogate motherhood, in general, ethically acceptable? For a variety of reasons I believe the answer is no: surrogate motherhood breaches children’s human rights regarding their coming-into-being; it confuses family roles and … Read More
February 25, 2011
I hope that I am unique, or at least unusual, in having detected plagiarism of my work five times during my career as a bioethics scholar. Despite extensive discussion of plagiarism in biomedical research published in scientific journals, to my … Read More
February 25, 2011
The idea of using genetic engineering to enhance human beings scares a lot of people. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center … Read More
February 22, 2011
The Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) that was signed into law nearly three years ago was groundbreaking, but limited. CGS described it at the time as a “good first step” and many others agreed. The final regulations, issued in November … Read More
February 22, 2011
The country’s first “saviour sibling”, a healthy boy whose discarded umbilical cord will help heal one of his two siblings from a genetic blood disease, has brought complicated ethical issues over biotechnology to the forefront in France. (France24)
February 21, 2011
After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find … Read More
February 21, 2011
Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of Parkinson’s disease. Blocking mental illness isn’t nearly as easy a task. But a push is on to expand research into how well these brain stimulators … Read More
February 21, 2011
Physicians are among those refusing to get vaccinations. With the variety of institutional policies and legal decisions in force around the country, it’s a serious matter. The American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has written an opinion … Read More
February 18, 2011
Although India is presently ranked by the UN as a middle-income country, recent findings from the World Economic Forum place the country among the lowest ranked nations in terms of gender equity.3 Women are less likely to be literate, continue … Read More
February 18, 2011
Moral enhancement is a topic that has sparked much current interest in the world of bioethics. The possibility of making people ‘better,’ not just in the conventional enhancement sense of improving health and other desirable (and desired) qualities and capacities, … Read More
