Should institutions enjoy freedom of conscience?
One of the most difficult issues in contemporary bioethics is “institutional freedom of conscience”. Should a healthcare facilities or nursing homes in a liberal democracy...
JAMA appoints new editor for new times
Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) lost both its deputy editor and its editor. To rephrase Oscar Wilde’s quip: to lose...
Will brainwashing make a comeback?
Imagine this scenario: the American military captures a fanatical soldier of the Islamic State who has been responsible for the deaths of several Americans. What...
Building the business of bundles of joy
Surrogacy, especially commercial surrogacy, is often criticised in BioEdge. So it’s only fair to give the surrogacy industry’s point of view from time to time....
IVF: a great investment opportunity
IVF is Big Business. Not as big as Big Tech or Big Pharma, perhaps, but Big. A bidding war for an Australian stock-exchange listed company...
Conscientious objection is ‘indefensible’, says WHO
The latest abortion care guidelines from the World Health Organization severely criticise conscientious objection (CO) as a major obstacle to making abortion freely available. “Conscientious...
Bioethics after Ukraine
In a thoughtful essay in The Hastings Center blog, Jonathan Moreno, a leading bioethicist, reflects on how bioethics will change after the war in Ukraine....
Bioethics must repudiate its white past to confront racism
The Black Lives Matter movement has exposed a crisis in bioethics, argues Camisha Russell, of the University of Oregon, in the American Journal of Bioethics....
Munich clinic spurns Russian and Belarus patients
According to the Geneva Convention, doctors should treat equally all non-comabtant patients, even if they are on the side of the enemy. How easy it...
Pets versus children
Pope Francis has an almost unrivalled gift for sparking controversy. Early last month he lamented the demographic winter – slowing global birth rates and rising...
Do critics of ‘conversion therapy’ live in a fact-free zone?
“We are committed to building a society in which conversion therapy no longer takes place,” says the UK Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss....
Should psychiatrists revise their ‘Goldwater Rule’?
American psychiatrists are ethically barred from commenting on the mental health of public figures under the so-called Goldwater Rule. This criterion, which was adopted by...