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Read More »When politics meets bioethics

It is now possible to detect fetal problems with just a sample of the pregnant woman’s blood. Women will probably be offered this test routinely in the first trimester. But the breakthroughs are said to raise serious ethical questions.

In 2008 Fan et al. (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.USA 2008; 105:16266–16271) non-invasively diagnosed fetal chromosome abnormality from cell-free DNA in maternal blood. Recently, at least two companies have announced plans to introduce non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) into health care.

The clinical role of NIPD is unclear. It could be used either as a screening test (with CVS or amniocentesis still required as a follow up diagnostic test) or it might replace invasive tests. Less likely, it might be interposed between current screening and invasive tests.

The most exciting, and potentially controversial, role of NIPD is if it can replace current invasive tests. Prenatal (cyto)genetic diagnosis could be achieved much earlier in pregnancy.

Read More »Should early non invasive prenatal testing be opposed?

The Guardian yesterday reports on the struggles of independent secondhand bookshops to compete with what one of its interviewees describes as “the Tesco of the second-hand book world”: Oxfam. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that Oxfam is now the biggest secondhand book retailer in Europe (though perhaps it shouldn't given that this is not a market with many large players). Apparently many small second-hand bookstores are complaining about what they see as Oxfam's unfair competition.

Read More »Is it wrong to raise money for charity?

When the ethical implication of some scientific or technological advance are debated, it is common for someone to remark that it’s a waste of time to debate whether this technology should be pursued—it will be developed anyway, won’t it, and if we want to spend our time fruitfully, we should ask, not whether this technology should be developed or used, but how it might be best used. I have occasionally been tempted by this line of thought myself, but on reflection, it’s rather puzzling. I’d like to try to get a bit clearer about it.

Read More »‘But it will happen anyway’

Victoria, Australia – where I write these words – is apparently right now in the grip of an epidemic of swine flu – an epidemic significant enough to play an important role in the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare a pandemic. ‘Pandemic’ sounds pretty serious, but in fact it is very difficult to get a sense of just how worried we should be. The World Health Organisation has warned Australia to prepare for deaths, but deaths from flu are perfectly normal occurrences at this time of the year. WHO says it is “concerned about current patterns of serious cases and deaths that are occurring primarily among young persons, including the previously healthy and those with pre-existing medical conditions or pregnancy”, but in Australia there have been no deaths. Indeed, outside of Mexico the death rate has been in line with what one might expect from a normal seasonal flu. Given this fact, it is probable that the death rate in Mexico is not a reflection of high virulence, but of high infection rate. Most people who come down with the flu in Mexico probably don’t routinely go to a doctor; thus, it is only the serious cases that are being counted.

Read More »Pandemic Pandemonium

It would be foolish of me to attempt to say anything substantive about the ethics of abortion in a blog post. But I do want to comment on Obama’s recent foray into the question, as well as on one interpretation of those comments. Addressing the graduating class of Notre Dame University, a traditionally Catholic university, and in the face of demonstrators denouncing him for his ‘pro-choice’ views, Obama called for each side to be respectful of the other. We can, he said, avoid demonizing one another, and work together on common causes. In particular, he said, we can work to reduce the number of abortions, by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, and work also to make the lives of women who go ahead with pregnancies in difficult situations more bearable.

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Andy Miah calls the “surge in popular activism, broad democratic demands and institutional reforms” an “ethical turn”. I’m not at all convinced, particularly about the activism. Rather, and feeling most cynical, it seems that a particular middle-class liberal conception of what is valuable and good has had a marketing success by managing to monopolise the term ‘ethical’.

Read More »The Abuse of ‘Ethical’

The English Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, is reported  to be considering scrapping the lotteries which determine whether parents get their first choice of schools for their children. Balls is quoted as saying that the lottery system can feel “arbitrary” and “random”. Well, give that man a dictionary. The Telegraph adds that he ‘admitted that they were "unfair"’,… Read More »Lotteries and Fairness

The link in the Guardian reads "Fertility experts warn about morality of egg freezing". In the Telegraph the word "moral" doesn't appear in the headline, but does appear in the lede (the first sentence of the story, which is supposed to summarize the essential facts): The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society… Read More »Which issues are moral issues? The Case of Egg Freezing

Two Swedish scientists have been threatened with legal action after publishing a scientific article sharply criticizing what they consider "charlatanry" in detecting deception. Nemesysco, a company named in the article wrote to the researchers that they may be sued for libel if they continue to write on this subject in the future. As a response to another legal threat the publisher has removed the online version of the article. Trying to remove information from the net is often counterproductive ("the Streisand effect"), and now copies of the article circulate online. Nemesysco has inadvertently drawn attention to the issue of the article, likely to their own detriment.

But can a scientific publication be libel? Does libel law serve a moral purpose?

Read More »Lies, libel and layered voice analysis