July 18, 2007
Anyone who has been paying attention to healthcare issues realizes that as treatment options have expanded, so have our ethical dilemmas. Partly in response to such dilemmas, almost all hospitals in the U.S. have created institutional ethics committees. These hospital … Read More
July 11, 2007
Volume 7, issue 7 of Bioethics is now available. Full content available by subscription only. “Has the Spread of HPV Vaccine Marketing Conveyed Immunity to Common Sense?” by Glenn McGee; Summer Johnson, p. 1 Review of David A. Shore (ed.), … Read More
July 9, 2007
Three years ago in The Atlantic, the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel wrote a critique of genetic engineering titled “The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering†Now he has turned it into a book. The title is … Read More
June 28, 2007
Emma Crichton-Miller reviews Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World by Liza Mundy. In the epilogue of this thought-provoking book, Liza Mundy writes of a friend seeing, on holiday on a New Jersey beach, a … Read More
June 19, 2007
The rapid advances of the neurosciences have drawn much attention from philosophic quarters. According to many, the neurosciences are providing insights into age-old questions about freewill, responsibility, personality, agency, emotion, rationality, and even the very nature of morality. (Metapsychology)
June 7, 2007
Those wishing to orient themselves in today’s vast landscape of biomedical advances may want to consult The Politics of Life Itself, a study of 21st-century biomedicine by sociologist Nikolas Rose. The book provides a comprehensive description of the latest biological … Read More
June 5, 2007
Charles Darwin looked deeply into nature and realized that animal life is ever changing, evolving over time. A short mental leap from there created an uproar: Humans are evolving, too. (The Beaufort Gazette)
May 30, 2007
In bookstores, the science aisle generally lies well away from the self-help section, with hard reality on one set of shelves and wishful thinking on the other. But Norman Doidge’s fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience straddles this … Read More
May 17, 2007
Debates about biotechnology tend to be about means. We argue about the limits of what we may do in pursuit of science or medicine. The ends to which new technological powers are put are far less frequently questioned. In The … Read More
May 10, 2007
Aubrey’s meteoric rise to international prominence as an advocate for longevity research makes his forthcoming publication with co-author Michael Rae, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Biotechnologies That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime , extremely important. (Ethical Technology Blog)
April 24, 2007
It was in 1949 that Elvin Stakman, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, issued the membership their marching orders: “Science cannot stop while ethics catches up.†(New York Times)
April 23, 2007
You might have forgotten this snippet of local news. In 2005, a San Francisco woman gave birth to a baby who as an embryo had been frozen for 13 years. While this may have been perceived as a curiosity, now … Read More
April 16, 2007
I have a book review of The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia posted on today’s First Things blog. The book is dry, but very good in its discussion of the legal issues, and not bad in explaining philosophical perspectives. … Read More
April 9, 2007
The timing of this book is perfect. An epidemic of anxiety over the cost of health care has catapulted reform back onto the national agenda, and states from California to Massachusetts are now experimenting with universal coverage. It also promises … Read More
February 28, 2007
The media and many scientists treat the ESCR/human cloning debates as if they were scientific in nature, rather than about ethics and philosophy–which cannot be determined by the scientific method. Now, a scientist writing in Nature, of all places, makes … Read More
January 22, 2007
Bryan Appleyard’s How to Live Forever or Die Trying offers an intriguing look at the geeky, freeze-dried, pill-popping world of people who want to go on and on. (The Observer)
January 19, 2007
by Jonathan D. MorenoThis vision of the futuristic army rests in large part on the application of anticipated advances in neuroscience and nanotechnology. Jonathan Moreno’s Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense deals with the ethical implications of applying neurotechnologies on the battlefield. … Read More
January 17, 2007
…how we can continue to advance technology without needlessly subjecting society to more thalidomide babies or Chernobyl melt-downs? (MSNBC)
January 2, 2007
If race is the haunted house of American history, Harriet Washington opens the door on the torture room in Medical Apartheid, her blood-spattered history of black America’s long and frequently nonconsensual relationship with experimental medicine. (San Francisco Chronicle)
