Will AI be useful for bioethics?
Will ChatGPT become a bioethical tool? Possibly, but not at the moment. A forum in The Hastings Center focused on this issue. Jon F. Merz,...
Decriminalise all forms of sexual activity, says UN report
A United Nations report has recommended the decriminalisation of drug use and sexual activity. The “March 8 Principles”, released on International Women’s Day, are supposed...
Is the Spanish government creating a black list of healthcare workers who are conscientious objectors?
Euthanasia became legal in Spain on 25 June 2021. An unusual feature of its law is that the Health Ministry is supposed to create a...
The virtues and the vices of the outrageous
A Norwegian bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, recently set out a case for “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – using the wombs of brain-dead women as surrogate mothers...
Should bioethicists hold a conference in Qatar?
FIFA’s choice of Qatar for the 2022 World Cup sparked huge ethical controversies. What about its abominable record on migrant workers? What about its record...
Do ‘conscientious providers’ matter more than ‘conscientious objectors’?
Dov Fox, an expert on health law and bioethics, has written a blistering attack on conscientious objection and a defence of “conscientious provision” in the...
Bioethicist protests that ‘whole body gestational donation’ is misunderstood
Bioethicists have chosen a lonely and disheartening profession. Locked away in an office, they pound out publications which only a few hundred of people –...
Seeking an ethical way to support pro-abortion doctors in anti-abortion states
The landscape of conscientious objection has changed. Back in 2006, when abortion was legal across the United States in the decades after Roe v. Wade,...
Are we already living in a transhumanist reality?
Last year an Oxford expert in transhumanism published “Future Superhuman: Our transhuman lives in a make-or-break century”. Elise Bohan, an Australian, argued that “ape-brained meat...
Gentle giant’s skeleton removed from museum
Earlier this month the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, announced that it will remove from the display cases of the Hunterian Museum the skeleton...
Catholic hospital could be forced to perform gender-affirming surgery
The University of Maryland St Joseph Medical Center violated federal law when it refused to provide gender-affirming surgical care to a transgender man (ie, a...
The gift that doesn’t keep on giving: non-existence.
The philosophy of anti-natalism refuses to die. In the latest issue of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Finnish bioethicist Matti Häyry renews the argument for...