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Biomedical Science

Foetal pain and the abortion debate: believing what you want to believe

By Janet Radcliffe-Richards

Last Friday’s BBC morning news headlines included a report of two reviews by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of evidence about foetal pain. The reviews concluded that foetuses under 24 weeks could not feel pain, because “nerve connections in the cortex, the area which processes responses to pain in the brain, does not form properly before 24 weeks”, and that even after that stage “a foetus is naturally sedated and unconscious in the womb”.

The corresponding article on the BBC website added the comment that “anti-abortion campaigners challenged the reports”. There were no details about the form these challenges took or who they came from, but as the reports were reviews of scientific evidence, it sounds as though a challenge to the reports must have been a challenge to the scientific claims. Of course scientific claims are always potentially open to challenge, so if the article had reported that scientists had come forward to challenge the methodology of key studies, for instance, or the way the reviews represented the data, we would just have known there was an ongoing scientific debate on the subject. But the implication of the BBC article was that people who were against abortion were challenging the scientific claims about foetal pain. And if this is true, it is interesting. Why should people with particular moral views (about the wrongness of abortion) or political ambitions (to prevent it) issue challenges to scientific claims? Most of these people are not scientists, and there is no reason to think they have special knowledge of nerve connections in the foetal cortex. So why are the challenging what the scientists say?

Read More »Foetal pain and the abortion debate: believing what you want to believe

The ethics of geoengineering – comments welcome

Should we encourage or avoid large scale environmental manipulation, for example in order to reduce climate change?

Measures such as carbon dioxide capture or ocean iron fertilisation have the potential to mitigate global warming, but what ethical issues are raised by these technologies? How should we take into account the potential risks of such measures, and how should they be weighed against the risks of inaction?

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Today we lost the drug war

What does synthetic biology mean? Quinn Norton argues it means the end of the drug war: synthetic biology might be able to do the wonderful things (as well as the dangerous things) envisioned by Venter and others, but it definitely can produce drugs. It is also much easier to produce chemicals than fix the environment or make bioweapons. As Quinn notes:

"It’s still hard to grow drugs in medium. But the whole point of this
project is to make it easier. Who will be motivated to put in the work
to make it happen? Especially if it’s so bad for organized crime? Drug
addicts, frankly. You think they look like street junkies with DTs, but
a fair number look like scientists, because they are. Drugs will
finally be p2p, and governments and drug lords alike will find out what
it’s like to be media companies and counterfeiters in a world of
lossless copying and 100Mb pipes. Junkies will be victims of their
success, and if we don’t get serious about treating addiction instead
of trying to fight chemicals, it’s going to look a lot more bloody and
horrid than the RIAA’s lawsuit factory. This is just one vision of what
this kind of disruption looks like when people get a hold of it."

Read More »Today we lost the drug war

Synthetic biology: eroding the moral distinctions between animate and inanimate.

Sometimes science reveals distinctions to be false. Time and space were thought to be distinct, separate things, until Einstein showed that they were fundamentally intertwined. Graphite and diamond were thought to be made of distinct substances, until Tennant showed that they would release the same gas when burned. In a similar way, progress in the… Read More »Synthetic biology: eroding the moral distinctions between animate and inanimate.

Playing God for the first time…

With his new paper Craig Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity’s history, potentially peeking into it’s destiny. The challenge is to eat the apple without choking on the worm.

Eugenics or ‘reprogenetics’? Call it what you will, but let’s do it

As The
Times recently
reports:

 

“British couples are to be offered a groundbreaking genetic test that
would virtually eliminate their chances of having a baby with one of more than
100 inherited diseases. The simple saliva test, which identifies whether
prospective parents carry genetic mutations that could cause life-threatening
disorders such as cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy or sickle-cell
anaemia in their children, is to be launched within weeks in Britain… If the
procedure, which will cost about £400 per person or £700 for a couple, is
widely adopted, it could dramatically reduce the incidence of 109 serious
inherited conditions that collectively affect one in every 280 births.”

 

Surely we should be delighted at such great news?
Surprisingly, not everyone agrees. Some experts object that the test, devised
by the Californian company
Councyl, could lead to “back door eugenics”.
They also argue that the
diseases it detects are too rare for most people to need screening, and that it
will cause needless alarm. Finally, they fear that it will raise demand for
embryo screening and abortion.

 

Read More »Eugenics or ‘reprogenetics’? Call it what you will, but let’s do it

What is the most moral way to use embryos?

By: Francesca Minerva

Reading this news  about a couple that donated two embryos to another sterile couple, I started to ask myself if embryo donation is really the most moral way to use embryos. Some people, indeed,  suggest that this choice is the one that people who take into account human life should take. We read “The concept of donating embryos to other couples got a push eight years ago under President George W. Bush, who dedicated federal funding to promote, in his terms, “embryo adoption.” The federal funding has since increased to $4.2 million. Now, Georgia has passed the nation's first state law symbolically recognizing embryo adoption”. I am especially skeptical about two issues connected to embryo donation.

Read More »What is the most moral way to use embryos?

The Disease Industry

In a recent article, “Sure, It’s Treatable. But Is It a Disorder?” the New York Times warns its readers to “brace yourselves for P.E. – shorthand for premature ejaculation”. If the pharmaceutical industry is to be believed, that may not be bad advice, since according them, “One in three men actually have the condition.” But the advice is not meant to be taken literally. What the reporter really meant was, “brace yourselves for ‘P.E.’ – shorthand for ‘premature ejaculation’”. According to the article, just as the makers of Viagra have in recent years introduced into the popular lexicon the name of a “modern man’s malady” and it’s acronym – ‘erectile dysfunction’, or ‘E.D.’, we can expect a similar effect as a result of the development and marketing of Priligy: a new pill for “men who ejaculate before copulating or within seconds of beginning.”Read More »The Disease Industry

Feetility – should we pay egg and sperm donors?

Lisa Jardine, the head of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, has called for public debate about paying egg or sperm donors. Currently donors are given a maximum of £250 in reimbursement for expenses. But donation rates have fallen in recent years, at least in part related to changes in rules in 2005 preventing donor anonymity. As a consequence a significant number of patients seeking donor egg or sperm for in-vitro fertilisation have been forced to travel overseas. In essence Jardine suggests that a regulated local market in donor eggs and sperm may be better than unregulated fertility tourism.

Read More »Feetility – should we pay egg and sperm donors?