June 18, 2013
In her new book, “What Doctors Feel,†Dr. Danielle Ofri tells the unforgettable story of a pediatrician she interviewed, a woman she calls Eva. In taut, vivid prose, Dr. Ofri describes a tragic event that occurred during Eva’s residency. She … Read More
May 21, 2013
With this as my background, I am hardly a disinterested reviewer of a new anthology of essays by 21 nurses. It is beautifully wrought, but more significantly a reminder that these “semi-invisible†people, as Lee Gutkind calls them in this … Read More
May 15, 2013
The villain in “Inferno,†Brown’s sixth novel, follows a movement called transhumanism. Brown, 48, who spent more than two years in Florence researching the book, has been interested in the controversial concept of transhumanism for years. (Today)
May 7, 2013
“Imaging what the world might be like if we were really good at making things—better things—cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale.…The global prospect would be, not scarcity, but unprecedented abundance—radical, transformative, and sustainable abundance. We would be able to … Read More
May 1, 2013
The Healing Cell, just out from Hachette Press, deals with promising stem cell therapies from the patient perspective– and that’s a good thing. (Forbes)
April 1, 2013
The field of synthetic biology is hugely exciting but it’s provoked fears of bioterrorism and man-made plagues – so do the benefits really outweigh the risks? (Yahoo News, UK)
March 22, 2013
Is transhumanism—the possibility of enhancing human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities through biotechnology —a brave new world that we should welcome with open arms? (Forbes)
March 5, 2013
It is the “first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking, according to the editors, and the anthology includes a roster of leaders in transhumanist thought. (Kurtzweil)
January 3, 2013
In the face of such uncertainty, what we need most is to understand better—issue by issue—what is happening on the ground in the country; and a terrific new book Governing Health in Contemporary China by my CFR colleague and renowned … Read More
December 3, 2012
Dr. Ricki Lewis knows a thing or two about genetics after decades in genetic counseling and multiple books and academic papers. Her latest book, a narrative nonfiction title The Forever Fix has been in her head since gene therapy began … Read More
November 16, 2012
Time magazine recently featured Kurzweil on it cover, and Fortune described him as “a legendary inventor with a history of mind-blowing ideas.” And now he has a new book, with a subtitle that suggests he has found another such idea: … Read More
October 31, 2012
Nanotechnology is helping to revolutionise many technology and industry sectors, such as environmental science, energy, medicine, food safety and transportation. For teaching and research I often have to recommend a text that introduces risk assessment to graduate students who are … Read More
October 17, 2012
Those issues are at the heart of Cohen’s new book, “Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics.†The focus of his year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the book examines three categories of medical … Read More
October 12, 2012
In “Regenesis,” a book exploring the science of synthetic biology, George Church and Ed Regis imagine a world where micro-organisms are capable of producing clean petroleum or detecting arsenic in drinking water, where people sport genetic modifications that render their … Read More
October 4, 2012
In the future, genetically modified organisms could be making our medicines, our fuel, our housewares, our houses — and they could even help us remake ourselves. All that may sound like science-fiction, but the future is already arriving, in the … Read More
September 20, 2012
Artificial wombs, lifelong fertility – it seems the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, but an author says it will happen. (Salon)
September 20, 2012
Who’s watching the health care professionals? A Johns Hopkins surgeon calls for a major paradigm shift. (The Atlantic)
March 11, 2011
David Goodstein has a unique perspective on scientific fraud, having pursued a successful career in research physics before becoming the provost of Caltech, one of the world’s premier research institutions. As an administrator, he helped formulate Caltech’s first policy for … Read More
March 11, 2011
Nicholas Agar’s new book explores the ethical implications of the use of present and future technologies to enhance human minds, bodies, and experiences. Agar raises enormous and never-finally-answerable questions about the end—or perhaps, better, ends—of human beings. (Science Progress)
March 9, 2011
Nancey Murphy of Fuller Theological Seminary has an interesting and challenging essay in a recent book called “Neuroethics.†She argues that the dominant conception of a soul, a spiritual essence separable from the body, is the result of a mistranslation. … Read More
March 8, 2011
Back in the 1940s, the early IT pioneer Claude Shannon fell in love with a computer called Betty, and no one raised an eyebrow. At the time, “computer” was simply the term for a person who performed routine calculations for … Read More
February 4, 2011
The present text, Progress in bioethics is part of the Basic bioethics series and is a compilation of papers relating to progressive bioethics in America. The collection of works, edited together by Jonathan Moreno and Sam Berger, are squarely rooted … Read More
January 29, 2011
Insightful and poignant, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks takes an unflinching look at the history of the first “immortal” human cell line, the scientists involved in its discovery, the woman whose cells were used, and the impact it has … Read More
January 4, 2011
In his recent book, NIH Director Francis Collins refers to DNA and the new science of genomics as “the language of life.†Thanks to the mapping of the human genome, says Collins, virtually all biomedical researchers agree “that their approach … Read More
December 9, 2010
The anthology, Feminist Bioethics, edited by Jackie Leach Scully, Laurel E. Baldwin-Ragaven, and Petya Fitzpatrick, examines how feminist bioethics theoretically and methodologically challenges dominant bioethics, and whether feminist ethical approaches are useful for exploring difference in other contexts. It offers … Read More
