by Rebecca Roache The Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen recently—and controversially—claimed that mothers should be required by law to breastfeed their babies for the first six months of their lives.  A few days later, she partially ret…

Recent post from my blog: Imagine that Herman has toxic radioactive waste from his laboratory. He decides to bury it in the ground next to his laboratory, knowing that it will expose the surrounding houses to dangerous radiation. As a resul…

Is drug addiction a disease? Substance Dependence appears as a diagnosis in the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-IV). There are medical specialists in the field who use a range of different drug an…

Almost a month ago the websites of several newspapers and magazines (http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpps/news/who-is-cyber-pranking-victim-jessi-slaughter-dpgoha-20100720-fc_8747638) reported the case of a young girl (11 years old) from Flo…

Antibiotics are overprescribed. That is, they are given out in many cases where they will achieve little or nothing for the patient. On its own, this would merely be wasteful, but usage of antibiotics increases the development of antibiotic…

Introduction In a recently broadcasted documentation about gene-doping, multiple award winning Swiss science journalist and author, Beat Glogger, reflected the issue of gene-doping in a sensitive and objective manner. In this Swiss-German c…

by Rebecca Roache I am over a month late reading the news of the Swedish couple who have chosen to keep the sex of their toddler a closely-guarded secret, but the story is too interesting to pass up the opportunity to write about it here. T…

Reading David Edmonds’ post here and the ensuing discussion about why journalists might be under an imperative to bring important information to light has got me wondering about the other actors involved in exposing cases of wrongdoing. Bef…

When should journalists censor themselves? Last week secret US military files about the war in Afghanistan were published on WikiLeaks. The reaction from the US government was swift and furious. The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said th…

Yesterday Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Bioethics at Queen Mary College, London, wrote in a Facebook update: ‘I am fed up with being asked to come into science/medicine projects, add a bit of ethics fairy dust, usually without getting any …