Will the stem cell wars erupt again?
Scientists at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory have scripted another perplexing episode in the on-going mystery of producing human embryonic stem cells. In...
Nominations for a bioethics hall of fame
As part of a promotional interview in The Atlantic, Dr Jonathan Moreno was asked to nominate organisations and individuals for a “bioethics hall of fame”....
What is the ideal number of parents? 2? 4? 5?
How many parents is too few, or too many, or just right? Dr Kamal Ahuja, a well-known IVF specialist at the London Women’s Clinic, once...
Organ donors need compensation, says UK bioethics think tank
Organ donors should have their funerals subsidised and women who donate their eggs for research should be paid, says an influential British bioethics think tank....
Interview: Art Caplan on boycotting Chinese organ transplants
In response to the “barbarous practice of obtaining organs from executed prisoners” in China, the prominent US bioethicist Arthur Caplan, together with other experts, proposed...
Are they all like Jeremy Bentham?
How appropriate, I’ve always thought, that the father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, was pickled and placed on display at University College London. Utilitarianism is a...
Boycott China, say bioethicists
Despite assurances that the practice is winding down, China persists in using organs from executed prisoners. In an editorial in The Lancet, several prominent bioethicists...
Life with Down syndrome overwhelmingly happy, says US study
The latest research on life with Down syndrome paints a very positive picture. In a major feature in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, Dr...
German ethicists can’t agree on humanized animals
The German Ethics Council (Deutscher Ethikrat) has recommended that researchers be allowed to insert human genes into mice in a major report on human-animal mixtures....
Minimally conscious British woman must be allowed to live, says judge
A British woman in a “minimally conscious state” should not have her feeding tube removed so that she can die, a judge has ruled in...
Interested in a survey on race?
“Race” is a hardy concept, but does it have any social or scientific validity? Throughout 2011, the Progress Educational Trust in the UK has been...
Bahraini doctors jailed for treating protesters
Most news about military medical ethics involves doctors who harm patients. But in Bahrain 20 Shi’ite doctors and nurses have been jailed for up to...