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Biotechnology

Artificial Brains and Personal Identity

Professor Henry Markram, Director of the Blue Brain Project in Switzerland, has told a conference in Oxford that an artificial human brain is achievable within a decade: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/5894875/Artificial-human-brain-could-be-built-in-next-decade.html What would count as a ‘human brain’ is debatable, of course, but the prospect of an artificial grounding for cognitive and other mental functions raises many fundamental… Read More »Artificial Brains and Personal Identity

A tiny step forward

Researchers have managed to produce live-born mice (original article) descended from induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells), cells taken from adult animals and treated to become stem cells. That individuals could be produced from embryonic stem cells was already known, but this proves that the IPS cells can produce all kinds of cells in an adult body. Good news for people uneasy about the need for embryonic stem cells… or is it?

If one argues that it is wrong to use embryonic stem cells because embryos carry moral rights, then the question is whether the creation of IPS cells produce something that also has moral rights.

Read More »A tiny step forward

Not better than the alternative: an informal experimentation tragedy

Police are reinvestigating the 2007 death of Yolanda Cox, a woman who collapsed in anaphylactic shock after being injected with an experimental drug by her sister, a GP. The drug was developed by their mother, originally intended to treat diabetes but apparently believed to extend lifespan. After testing on diabetic patients and apparently themselves without any apparent side effects the mother and sister gave it to the woman three times, with tragic consequences the third time. Was it a failure of medical ethics, research ethics – or plain psychological bias?

Read More »Not better than the alternative: an informal experimentation tragedy

Shining monkey, sadistic conclusion?

Japanese researchers have genetically modified marmoset monkeys, and demonstrated that the modification can be inherited by their offspring. The modification was the standard green fluorescent protein making the monkey's glow green under UV light, a marker to demonstrate that the modification worked (BBC shows a picture of their feet glowing "an eerie green", while the picture in Nature's News and Views shows the cute monkeys in normal light and the original paper shows both). The long-term aim is to be able to produce transgenic primates that could act as disease models for humans – many conditions do not map well onto mice and rats. But is it acceptable to introduce heritable illness conditions into animals?

Read More »Shining monkey, sadistic conclusion?

Self-control matters – but to what extent can it be taught?

Recently in
the news, a report published by the independent think-tank Demos reminds us of
the importance of the capacity for self-control (it also mentions empathy, to
which most of the following remarks apply) in determining life outcomes. It
argues that self-control lessons should be taught at school if children,
particularly from deprived backgrounds, are to be given the tools they need to
succeed in life – low-self-control has for instance been shown to positively
correlate with length of unemployment or criminal behaviour, and negatively
with academic achievement. The report echoes renewed interest in the United
States in a now famous experiment by Walter Mischel on deferred gratification,
dating back to the late 1960s. Mischel tested the capacity of a group of
four-year olds to resist the temptation to eat straightaway a marshmallow he
had given them. The children who were able to refrain turned out to be better
adjusted, more dependable and to do better academically on the whole later in
life.

 

The report
by Demos makes important points and its proposals deserve to be supported.
Nevertheless, even if they are put into practice, we might still feel concerned
about how effective we can expect them to be. There is indeed a body of
evidence suggesting that the capacity for self-control is to a large extent
genetically determined (Wright & Beaver, 2005; Beaver & al., 2009).

 

Read More »Self-control matters – but to what extent can it be taught?

Contradicting Nature

Rubén Noé Coronado Jiménez is 25 and pregnant with twins. He is unusual in that he is a transsexual man, in the middle of hormone treatments and about to undergo a full operation to change his sex: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/transexual-man-pregnant-twins . The operation has, of course, been postponed while he and his female partner await the birth… Read More »Contradicting Nature

Designer Babies and Slippery Slopes

Designer babies are in the news again. The LA Fertility Institutes, headed by a 1970s IVF pioneer, have offered the opportunity for potential parents to choose traits such as the eye and hair colour of their children: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7918296.stm Unsurprisingly, slippery slope arguments have already begun to appear: http://www.theage.com.au/world/la-delivers-first-designerbaby-clinic-20090302-8meq.html Marcy Darnovsky, director of the Centre for… Read More »Designer Babies and Slippery Slopes

Is doodling a form of cheating?

The public
often complains about the fluctuating and conflicting attitudes of scientists.  So often do things heralded as good for us
one week turn out to be deadly the next (consider, for example, this recent
report about vitamin pills) that there seems little point in
trying to follow the advice of scientists.  

Some recent
news stories raise the question of whether the public is inclined to dismiss
the conflicting views of ethicists, too.  Ethical
concerns about pharmacological cognitive enhancement have regularly been
reported in the press (see, for example, here,
here,
and here);
whilst at the same time—as Dominic Wilkinson has noted on this blog—the
public has embraced non-pharmacological cognitive enhancement in the form of software designed to improve brain power, and the media
currently abounds with docile, non-panicky reports of how instant messaging,
texting,
taking short naps,
taking long naps,
listening to The Beatles,
and doodling can all enhance cognition in various ways. 
So far, there have been no reports of ethical concerns about these
activities: nobody is suggesting that students who doodle during lectures are cheating.  It seems that, despite the concerns of some, the public is willing
to embrace cognitive enhancement in a variety of forms.

Read More »Is doodling a form of cheating?

Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

Following
the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical
Sciences building
is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues
surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been
revisited in the media—see, for example, here ,
here,
and here.

The number
of animals used per year in scientific experiments worldwide has been estimated
at 200 million—well in excess of the population of Brazil and over three times that of the United Kingdom. If we take the importance of an ethical issue
to depend in part on how many subjects it affects, then, the ethics of animal
experimentation at the very least warrants consideration alongside some of the
most important issues in this country today, and arguably exceeds them in
importance. So, what is being done to address
this issue?

Read More »Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

Travelling for Treatment

A BBC report today suggests that “many” UK couples are going overseas to choose the sex of their children. What seems most odd about this is that in some cases they go to places where sex selection is illegal.

What is interesting here is the fascination with what people do when they go overseas or why they go overseas. There are a whole range of stories about Britons going overseas to get things that they cannot get in the UK – or cannot get in the UK as cheaply. The obvious examples are sex selection, assisted suicide or treatments not available on the NHS.

Read More »Travelling for Treatment