A new method of screening eggs for IVF has been developed, promising better chances of successful IVF cycles. Two out of three women fail at each IVF attempt, and a large part of this is believed to be due to abnormalities in the number of …

Professor Savulescu comments: Professor Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, and Director of the Program on the…

Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong will be giving two Leverhulme lectures and a special ethics seminar on Neuroscience and Neuroethics at the University of Oxford as part of his Leverhulme Visiting Professorship programme 2008 &…

Tuesday was a wonderful, exciting, day.   But the job of the philosophical blogger is to look beyond the general euphoria, and seek out discussion points.   A commentator in the ChicagoTribune remarked th…

A recent study at the University of Texas published in the  "Royal Society Journal Biology Letters" suggests a connection in  attractive and young women between  high levels of oestradiol and some peculiar charac…

In an opinion piece on the BBC website this week Professor Simon Baron-Cohen has questioned the wisdom of adopting pre-natal screening for autism, raising the possibility that it would prevent the existence of future great mathematicians. T…

These days the Vatican’s statements sound a bit like a broken record, repeating continuously “Non possumus”. It started at the beginning of December when Benedict XVI refused to support President Sarkozy’s proposal that encourages the gover…

A 79 year old euthanasia campaigner in New Zealand has attracted local and international publicity after having the words ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattooed across her chest. Although this seems unlikely to be widely emulated her action highligh…

Reuters reports: Brain-boosting drugs: why not?, experts say (various follow ups in different media). The story is based on an opinion article in Nature, where a number of medical, legal and philosophical researchers argue that society must…

We are surrounded by many ethical issues, and their complexity makes it tempting to treat each in isolation. But we need to remember that to justify any position requires reference to universal principles, and these principles may well have…