If you were offered a treatment that claimed to be able to improve your memory and creativity, enhance neuroplasticity and increase cognitive ability, and prevent later cognitive decline would you take it? Many people would – at least if th…

On Sunday The Observer published an article by Colin Blakemore entitled ‘Science is Just one Gene away from Defeating Religion’. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/22/genetics-religion). After a necessarily brief overview…

The Ethox Centre and the Programme on the Ethics of New Biosciences are co-organising a one-day workshop to explore the ethical and regulatory issues surrounding the recent development and marketing of direct to consumer genetic tests. Comp…

A paper has recently been published demonstrating that a previously learned fearful reaction can be weakened using a drug. The aim of the research is to ameliorate PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, where traumatic experiences cause an o…

Two of our regular authors, Rebecca Roache and Barbro Bjorkman, have written an opinion piece on the ethics of keeping a child from its parents for BBC Magazine Online, discussing the issues surrounding the case of the Web…

Back in 2001 Richard Batista, a vascular surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, donated a kidney to his wife Dawnell Batista in an attempt to save both her life and their failing marriage (here and here). Although the transplantation …

“Luca was gay”(in Italy Luca is a male name) is the title of a song that will compete at the next Italian musical festival of Sanremo in few days.Unluckily the regulation of the competition forbids circulating lyrics and music of the songs …

Friday 27 February, 12.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, 34 Broad St, Oxford, OX1 3BD Abstract: There are some members of the human species whose cognitive capacities and potential are no higher than thos…

Researchers at University of Toronto have demonstrated that they can decode which of two drinks a test subject prefers by scanning their brains with infrared light. (Original paper here.) The intention is to develop better brain-computer in…

The latest issue of New Scientist features an article by Michael Brooks on the evolutionary origins of religious belief. Brookes spends most of the article considering the relative merits of the two main contending hypotheses. On one view, …