April 8, 2024
Research Ethics
April 5, 2024
Pig Kidney Transplant Raises Hopes for Clinical Trials
(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
Exclusive: US Lawmaker Seeks Answers on FDA Inspection of Musk’s Neuralink
(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
The Allure and Dangers of Experimenting with Brain-Dead Bodies
(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
New Articles from BMC Medical Ethics Are Now Available
March 21, 2024
The Psychedelic Evangelist
(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
March 21, 2024
Watch Neuralink’s First Human Subject Demonstrate His Brain-Computer Interface
(Wired) – On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the … Read More
March 21, 2024
More Studies by Columbia Cancer Researchers Are Retracted
(New York Times) – Scientists in a prominent cancer lab at Columbia University have now had four studies retracted and a stern note added to a fifth accusing it of “severe abuse of the scientific publishing system,” the latest fallout … Read More
March 19, 2024
Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Explain Value of Shock Therapy
(Quanta Magazine) – Studies have found that some 50% to 70% of patients with major depressive disorder see their symptoms improve after a course of ECT. In comparison, medications aimed at altering brain chemistry help only 10% to 40% of … Read More
March 13, 2024
How Science Sleuths Track Down Bad Research
(Wall Street Journal) – It was early January when the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute received a complaint about signs of image manipulation in dozens of papers by senior researchers. Days later, the organization said it was seeking to retract or correct … Read More
March 11, 2024
Doctors Can Now Edit the Genes Inside Your Body
(Wall Street Journal) – It sounds like science fiction, but Odunsi is among dozens of people participating in studies on a controversial new forefront of the gene-editing revolution. Regulators last year approved the world’s first medicine using Crispr, the Nobel … Read More
March 8, 2024
Could AI-Designed Proteins Be Weaponized? Scientists Lay Out Safety Guidelines
(Nature) – Could proteins designed by artificial intelligence (AI) ever be used as bioweapons? In the hope of heading off this possibility — as well as the prospect of burdensome government regulation — researchers today launched an initiative calling for … Read More
March 7, 2024
The Fear That Inspired the Creation of OpenAI
(Wired) – Putting the legal dispute aside, the emails released by OpenAI show a powerful cadre of tech entrepreneurs founding an organization that has grown to immense power. Strikingly, although OpenAI likes to describe its mission as focused on creating … Read More
March 7, 2024
The Reckoning
(Science) – Didier Raoult and his institute found fame during the pandemic. Then, a group of dogged critics exposed major ethical failings. But in January, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journals that published the papers announced they were retracting … Read More
March 5, 2024
Powerful Psychedelic Gains Renewed Attention as a Treatment for Opioid Addiction
(New York Times) – Ibogaine, a formidable psychedelic made from the root of a shrub native to Central Africa, is not for the timid. It unleashes a harrowing trip that can last more than 24 hours, and the drug can … Read More
March 5, 2024
Your Child’s Medicine Probably Wasn’t Fully Vetted. Here’s Why.
(Undark) – When drugs get approved, it’s usually on the basis of how they function in adults. This holds true for nearly all conditions, including mental health disorders, cancer, and rare diseases. As a result, children are usually prescribed medication … Read More
March 4, 2024
More Than 2 Million Research Papers Have Disappeared from the Internet
(Nature) – More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, a study of more than seven million digital publications suggests. The findings, published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication on 24 January, indicate … Read More
March 1, 2024
Fired Scientists in Canada Failed to Acknowledge Links to China, Newly Released Records Say
(Associated Press) – Two scientists at a high-security infectious disease laboratory in Canada lost their jobs after reviews found they failed to protect sensitive material and information and did not acknowledge links with China, newly released records show. The scientists, … Read More
February 29, 2024
How Genetically Modified Pigs Could End the Shortage of Organs for Transplants
(NPR) – At the end of the drive, I meet David Ayares, who runs Revivicor Inc., a biotech company based in Blacksburg, Virginia. Ayares has invited me to be the first journalist to tour the company’s research farm, which is … Read More
February 29, 2024
Exclusive: Musk’s Neuralink Brain Implant Company Cited by FDA Over Animal Lab Issues
(Reuters) – U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk’s Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in … Read More
February 28, 2024
Indigenous People Accuse Radiologists of Secretly Studying Their Organs
(Washington Post) – Dozens of Indigenous people have brought a lawsuit against two radiologists in Canada, accusing them of conducting MRI scans without their consent as part of a secret scientific study of their livers. According to the lawsuit, 59 … Read More
February 28, 2024
A New Edition of Public Health Ethics is Now Available
February 27, 2024
Why a Paper Retracted Abortion-Pill Studies Cited in a Case Set for the Supreme Court
(Nature) – Nature spoke to the researcher who contacted Sage with concerns about the papers, as well as to reproductive-health specialists to learn about the perceived issues that triggered the papers’ retractions. They praise the retractions, but say that there … Read More
February 26, 2024
A New Edition of European Journal of Human Genetics Is Now Available
February 23, 2024
‘All of Us’ Genetics Chart Stirs Unease Over Controversial Depiction of Race
(Nature) – Some geneticists have expressed their unease about a figure in a high-profile Nature paper that was published earlier this week, noting that it could be misinterpreted as reinforcing racist beliefs. The figure has reignited a long-standing debate among … Read More
