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Good Enough Lives – Procreative Satisficence
By Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics Should parents undertake prenatal testing? Is there a moral reason to prevent disability in your future child through embryo selection? In a special Moral Philosophy Seminar yesterday evening, Professor Tom Shakespeare, from the University of East Anglia, gave a nuanced and multi-faceted argument against the arguments advanced by Julian Savulescu…
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Four myths about IVF in older women
Dominic Wilkinson, @Neonatalethics Reports that a 62-year-old Spanish woman has given birth after IVF treatment have led many to question whether there should be age limits with such treatment. Lina Alvarez, a doctor in north-west Spain, isn’t the oldest person to have had success with IVF. Earlier this year, in India, Daljinder Kaur is said…
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The bright side of Brexit
Let’s suppose, entirely hypothetically and for the sake of argument, that Brexit is a disaster for the UK. Let’s suppose that sterling crashes; that foreign travel is punishingly expensive and that, if you can afford to go abroad, you’re a laughing stock. Let’s suppose that the Treasury’s estimates of billions of pounds of losses each…
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Announcement: 3rd Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled at the University of Oxford in any subject are invited to enter the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics by submitting an essay of up to 2000 words on any topic relevant to practical ethics. Eligibility includes visiting students who are registered as recognized students, and paying fees, but…
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The Clickbait Candidate
By James Williams (@WilliamsJames_) Note: This is a cross-post with Quillette magazine. While ‘interrobang’ sounds like a technique Donald Trump might add to the Guantanamo Bay playbook, it in fact refers to a punctuation mark: a disused mashup of interrogation and exclamation that indicates shock, surprise, excitement, or disbelief. It looks like this: ‽ (a rectangle means your font doesn’t…
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Guest Post: Mind the accountability gap: On the ethics of shared autonomy between humans and intelligent medical devices
Guest Post by Philipp Kellmeyer Imagine you had epilepsy and, despite taking a daily cocktail of several anti-epileptic drugs, still suffered several seizures per week, some minor, some resulting in bruises and other injuries. The source of your epileptic seizures lies in a brain region that is important for language. Therefore, your neurologist told you, epilepsy…
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Consciousness, memory and value
HBO’s new show Westworld has been getting a lot of attention. As the AV Club pointed out, it was HBO’s highest-rated premiere since ‘the good True Detective’ (i.e., since season one). The first episode involved a robot with human-like intelligence going through a truly horrible day to cater to the whims of actual humans, and then having her…
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The goodness of being multi-planetary
The Economist has a leader “For life, not for an afterlife“, in which it argues that Elon Musk’s stated motivation to settle Mars – making humanity a multi-planetary species less likely to go extinct – is misguided: “Seeking to make Earth expendable is not a good reason to settle other planets”. Is it misguided, or is the…
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Genome editing – the key ethical issues
Written by Dr Christopher Gyngell This article originally appeared on the OMS website The Nuffield Council of Bioethics released a report last Friday outlining the key ethical issues raised by genome editing technologies. Genome editing (GE) is a powerful, and extremely rapidly developing technology. It uses engineered enzymes to make precise, controlled modification to DNA.…
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Guest Post: Epigenetics: Barriers to the translation of scientific knowledge into public policies
Written by Charles Dupras and Vardit Ravitsky Bioethics Programs, School of Public Health, University of Montreal Environmental epigenetics is a rising field of scientific research that has been receiving much attention. It explores how exposure to various physical and social environments (e.g. pollution or social adversity) affects gene expression and, eventually, our health. Environmental…