Posts tagged with ‘bioethics’
Drugs that improve attention or prevent fatigue raise ethical questions in many workplace settings. But what about hospitals, where med students can supply themselves with the pills that let them work harder?
In the past year, stem cell research has taken great strides forward. Advocates and researchers alike are pushing for the federal government to expand its support.
Science and tech commentary from around the web: climate change health impacts, the bioethics of voting technology, evolution teaching tools, the wind in NYC, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, scivee.tv, and Green Chemistry in CA.
There are lots of righteous rationales for being against doping, but only one stands up to real scrutiny: the rules say it is not allowed.
The rapid increase in the number of people in the United States who are living a very long time stems in part from the steady development of life-extending medical developments. But the pace of advances is in fact so rapid that we are barely able to consider the ethical dimensions of come life-extending procedures and the social responsibilities that come with caring for an older population.
A quick look at the issues making the rounds on the science blogs this week.
An expert panel at Stanford University has determined that nearly one quarter of the colonies of human embryonic stem cells that the Bush administration had approved as ethically derived and eligible for study with federal funds do not meet Stanford’s ethics standards and should no longer be available to researchers there.
A quick look at the issues making the rounds on the science blogs this week.
Are selective mandatory genetic tests for presidential candidates merited in the case of Huntington’s disease?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently decided to no longer hold pharmaceutical companies to the standards of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki while conducting human drug trials. The change poses bioethical dilemmas when U.S. companies conduct trials on foreign soil. Merrill Goozner is currently reporting from Russia, which could become “ground zero” for discussion about the shift in policy.
The British parliament has passed a bill that authorizes inserting genetic material from humans into cow eggs in order to study diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
The media is abuzz with news of researchers at Cornell University successfully creating the first genetically engineered human embryo, and critics argue that this is a first step towards “designer babies.” But this is not necessarily a slippery slope, and we must consider that the potential rewards of this work are immense.
Two writers claim there is no assault on the scientific information that informs public policy and don’t even bother engaging the facts of the case.
The Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (H.R. 493) moved another step closer to becoming law yesterday. Although the House passed the bill last year, a reconciled version had go through again, as the Senate added an amendment when it passed the bill last week.
Report to the president fails on both academic and public policy levels to shine a meaningful light on human dignity and bioethics.
New technologies enable scientists to understand, alter, and enhance our brains. These raise a host of policy-relevant questions about privacy, social and political coercion, access to technology and therapy.
The Times Online offers a useful question-and-answer primer on the latest research news.
In a briefing yesterday for Capitol Hill staffers, neuroscientist Martha Farah explained that new technologies that enhance the power of the brain also raise questions about safety, economic fairness, privacy, and personal freedom.
Scientists at the University of California-Berkeley have developed a “visual decoder” which employes a computational algorithm to identify what someone saw just by examining their brain activity. The success of the study represents an advance in the scientific understanding of how the brain processes images, but could also have potential ramifications for mind-reading technology.
Recent investigations into performance-enhancing drug use in professional sports has driven debate over the substances in the public square. But when making decisions about steroids, one size does not fit all, and there’s more to consider than just “did he or didn’t he?”
An interview with Allen M. Hornblum, author of
Sentenced to Science: One Black Man’s Story of Imprisonment in America, on the history and ethics of practices largely hidden from public view.
It is estimated that approximately half a million frozen embryos are currently being stored by fertility clinics in the United States. Patients who have not used all the embryos they have created have several options from which to choose in deciding what to do with the embryos. An excerpt from the new report, Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law, from the Center for American Progress.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies recently created a chimeric mouse model for human liver disease to study drug efficacy. But research on chimeric models is drawing criticism from those who oppose the research on ethical grounds.
Spaceflight exacts a heavy toll on the human body, but the effect of weightlessness on the human immune system poses a considerable obstacle to long missions in space.
A new vision from Bill and Melinda Gates to eradicate malaria; better math curricula start with algebra; gene transfer likely not cause of death in trial; peer-reviewing bioterrorism intel.
Transparency for global health data; the legal status of embryos; the Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists; genome research open access; U.S. science education.
“A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all.” Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson on the new advances in stem cell research, and other news and commentary from the mainstream press.
The announcement that researchers can reprogram skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells is a triumph, but the discovery has implications beyond the creation of pluripotent cells.
Providing medical care over tens of millions of miles is fraught with complications central to the success of any manned mission to Mars.
A new proposal to grant embryos legal rights could disrupt more than just access to abortion: it threatens women’s rights and demonizes medical technology.
A team at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, Oregon has succeeded in cloning twenty macaque monkey embryos. The techniques they used to achieve this monumental breakthrough in cloning work should also work for making human embryos. Could this breakthrough pave the way to a new source for embryonic stem cells?
The J. Craig Venter Institute, along with researchers at MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently released a report entitled “Synthetic Genomics | Options for Governance.” But are there larger unanswered questions about the societal impacts of creating synthetic life?
Two companies are about to become the first Embryonic Stem Cell biotech firms to draft FDA applications for human testing. For some time, ESC-research opponents have complained that human trials have involved therapies utilizing adult stem cells, but none have utilized embryonic stem cells.
New Jersey boasts about its embryonic stem cell research ambitions, but most of the grant money is going toward adult stem cell research. What gives?
Only in rare cases should women freeze their eggs in order to save them for fertilization at a later date, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Cures Without Cloning, a Missouri group that opposes embryonic stem cell research, is trying to overturn the results of last year’s ballot initiative that protected stem cell research in the state. The CAP Bioethics Initiative posted an update last week. Here’s a roundup of the latest.
The U.S. is pursuing new approaches to nurture science and technology innovation—and so is the UK. This week’s National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship newsletter sets the two plans next to one another. Perhaps each government could learn from the other.
J. Craig Venter recently announced his institutes’s goal of sequencing the genomes of up to 50 people by the end of 2008, with an ultimate goal of sequencing 10,000 people’s genomes within ten years. Personalized genome sequencing will open the door to powerful new therapies, but it also poses ethical concerns over the possibility of genetic discrimination.
Robot sex is only five years away, robot marriage a mere 45 years, and the first state to legalize it will be Massachusetts. Those are the predictions of David Levy, a researcher at the University of Maastricht who successfully defended his thesis, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” on October 11 and made
international headlines.
How a little-known law in Louisiana that regulates the use of frozen embryos created by assisted reproduction challenges common sense and the Constitution.
Researchers at Stanford University appear to have developed a blood test that can predict the onset of diagnosable Alzheimer’s Disease with up to 90 percent accuracy. If the technique is confirmed and does become widely available before effective interventions, it is sure to spark another chapter in an ongoing discussion about the wisdom of such predictive power.
The University of Virginia is being accused of encouraging doctors to prescribe Johnson & Johnson’s anti-seizure and migraine drug Topamax “off-label” to treat alcoholism. But is the medicine safe for treating alcoholics without FDA approval?
Jonathan Moreno tells
Nature podcast host Kerri Smith about what happens when neuroscience meets warfare. Be prepared for soldiers who don’t need sleep and detainees who can be chemically induced to trust their captors.
The Guardian reported this past weekend that J. Craig Venter will soon announce that he has created artificial life. But even his spokesperson is saying that’s not the whole story.
