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Slaves to consent?
Nature reports that in response to analysis done by bioethicist Robert Streiffer (and published in the Hastings Center Report), Stanford University may withdraw the use for research of several of its publicly funded stem cell lines because of concerns about consent. In 2001 President Bush decreed that only lines already in existence would be eligible…
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Are falling house prices good or bad?
House prices have been falling quickly in both the US and, more recently, the UK. Newspaper reports tend to use negative language to refer to this fall. For example, todays edition of The Independent says: Today’s gloomy data, which is worse than economists had forecast, … However, it is not at all obvious that low…
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Saving the planet by reducing birth rates
Climate change will impact the well-being of future generations, directly by, for example, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heavy storms. It will have also indirect impacts on human heath – via cardiovascular diseases or by a rise in epidemics as emerging disease leave the tropic and go North. The beginning…
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How to Win the War on Drugs in Sport
Drug scandals again tarnish the Tour de France. Last week three riders, Spaniards Manuel Beltrain and Moises Duenas and Italian climber Riccardo Ricco, winner of two mountain stages, failed tests for the banned performance enhancer EPO. This year has seen fewer spectacular expulsions, but of course the game is not over. Does this mean the…
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Should Karadzic be Punished?
Yesterday the world celebrated the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the ex-Bosnian Serb leader who has twice been indicted by the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, and is charged with – among other atrocities — ordering his forces to kill at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys in Srebenica in July 1995 as part…
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The world’s failure to fulfill its goals
The Guardian reports that the world is not on track for meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal to halt and reverse the increase in Malaria by 2015. While the funding for malaria prevention has increased up to $1 bn per annum, this is not enough to meet the declared goal. Indeed, while the figure sounds…
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Reproductive science: is there something we’re missing?
Thirty years after the first test-tube baby, Nature asks various experts for their views on what the next thirty years of reproductive medicine will bring. Some of the more startling predictions are: No more infertility, with both children and 100-year-olds able to have children Embryos created from stem cells, increasing the ease of embryo research…
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Testing alternative therapies
The journal Science is today reporting on a controversial plan by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to test an alternative treatment for autism on children. The treatment, known as chelation therapy, involves the use of drugs that remove heavy metals from the blood. It’s based on a the theory – unsupported by…
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Art or child porn?
Much of the discussion has focussed on the question of whether such photographs are ‘art’, on the intent of the artist, and on the question of whether the children photographed are capable of consent. Defenders of the photographs have pointed out that the photograph on Art Monthly’s cover was taken by the girl’s mother, and…
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What’s wrong with the hermaphrodite world?
Making headlines last week, Melbourne bioethicist Rob Sparrow argued that in order to create the best future for their children, parents should select only girl children or hermaphrodites. He imagined a “post-sex” world in which males are no longer conceived, and women use frozen sperm, or artificial gametes to reproduce.