Separation Anxiety – Should Treatment be Imposed for Conjoined Twins?
by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics On the BBC News website this week, there is a feature on a pair of conjoined twins from Senegal who are currently living in Wales. They have an extremely rare condition – fused at the lower abdomen they …
Read MorePress Statement: He Jiankui
The response to reckless human experimentation has to go way beyond Dr He’s dismissal. This is not merely a failure of compliance, Dr He failed to grasp the ethical principles and concepts he was vigorously espousing. There will und…
Read MoreA third MRT-baby is on its way
Written by César Palacios-González It has been recently reported (link in Spanish) that a 32 year old Greek woman is 27 weeks pregnant with a child who was conceived after a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT) – in this case Maternal …
Read MoreCross Post: Biased Algorithms: Here’s a More Radical Approach to Creating Fairness
Written by Dr Tom Douglas Our lives are increasingly affected by algorithms. People may be denied loans, jobs, insurance policies, or even parole on the basis of risk scores that they produce. Yet algorithms are notoriously prone to biases.…
Read MoreCross Post: Philosophy Can Make the Previously Unthinkable Thinkable
Written by Dr Rebecca Brown In the mid-1990s, Joseph Overton, a researcher at the US think tank the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, proposed the idea of a ‘window’ of socially acceptable policies within any given domain. This came to be …
Read MoreIs Addiction an Expression of One’s Deep Self?
By Doug McConnell Chandra Sripada (2016) has recently proposed a conative self-expression account of moral responsibility which claims that we are responsible for actions motivated by what we care for and not responsible for actions motivat…
Read MoreReversibility, Colds, and Neurosurgery
By Jonny Pugh This blog was originally published on the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog Happy new year to readers of the blog! I always approach the new year with some trepidation. This is not just due to the terrible weather, or even…
Read MoreIn My Own Blood I Have Written The Things Important To Me
Adrien Locatelli, a French teenager claims to have injected DNA strands encoding verses from the Bible and the Quran in his thighs. “I did this experiment only for the symbol of peace between religions and science … It’s just symbolic.” he …
Read MoreHuman In Vitro Gametogenesis and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
Written by César Palacios-González It seems that in the not-so-distant future, scientists will be able to create functional human gametes (i.e. eggs and sperm) in a laboratory setting. In other words, they will be able to create human gamet…
Read MoreAbortion: a Law Unto Itself
By Charles Foster Wrongful life cases (typically where a birth has resulted from a failed sterilisation procedure), used to be big business. The parents would sue the negligent steriliser for the costs of bringing up the unwanted child. T…
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