Bioethics needs to change its focus or risk becoming “a source of entertainment”, says a bioethicist at Montreal’s McGill University. Dr Leigh Turner says that he suspects “that there are a lot of physicians that, if they were to go to a week-long bioethics conference or look at the bioethics literature, they would find it completely irrelevant to what they’re doing and what they focus on at work.”

Instead of highfalutin speculation about immortality and genetic engineering, Turner contends, bioethicists should turn their attention to topics like gun violence, poverty, the breakdown of communities and access to food, clean water and shelter. He urges his colleagues to stop commenting on the circus acts of cloning enthusiasts like the Raelians and to study global health and illness.

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