BIOETHICS
News marks an important step in normalizing the field as a regulated scientific activity. It also speaks to the sometimes-unpredictable ways that experimentation can address sources of human suffering.
BIOETHICS
In the early days of bioethics, the dominant paradigm was about finding ways to slow down the application and use of emerging technologies. While some still cling to this paradigm, the ethics of information technologies applied to biobanks and electronic health records is producing a major shift in thinking.
The 2005 culmination of the legal battle over Terri Schiavo’s life-sustaining treatment was as a flash point for public discussions about bioethics. While the field encompasses a wide range of complex and controversial subjects, debates over these issues often remain [...]
BIOETHICS
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously suggested that science and religion deal with non-overlapping areas of knowledge. The idea is useful for quelling debates about creationism, but it’s a mistake when developing public policy for the life sciences.
The National Institutes of Health have added 27 more human embryonic stem cell lines to the 13 approved two weeks ago. These new lines come from Harvard University and have some interesting stipulations attached to them that illustrate the diligence [...]
Yesterday President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The Commission’s Chair will be Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania and a political theorist. Its Vice Chair will be James [...]
Last week, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors issued a new policy for the transparent disclosure of conflicts of interest for the authors of papers published by journals in the consortium. A coalition of advocates have been pushing for [...]
Two of the Nobel Prize winners announced yesterday for Medicine or Physiology have something in common besides their groundbreaking work on how cells copy chromosomes. Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Carol W. Greider both served on presidential bioethics commissions. Blackburn, of [...]
So who is speaking here, an ethicist, a scientist, or a policymaker? It’s very hard for me to have a conversation about these issues, because people adopt incredibly defensive postures…The scientists on one side and civil-society organizations on the other. [...]
PUBLIC HEALTH
Office of Management and Budget review can be a good thing, but not when it duplicates peer review and delays generation of critical pubic health data.
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
In spite of the issues raised by the birth of Nayda Suleman’s octuplets, we should not lose sight of the pioneering IVF research that laid the ground work for a scientific triumph that has helped millions of infertile couples for over 30 years.
BIOETHICS
In supporting health care reform, we can be good citizens and morally responsible neighbors, and still do right by those we love.
Sarah Arnquist, reporting for The New York Times, tells a moving personal story that captures the hope permeating some of the projects now breaking down barriers between patients, research participants, and scientists. Her hook is the quest of Amy Farber, [...]
BIOETHICS
A recent discovery might open the door to an effective male contraceptive drug, a technology that could have been developed decades ago, were it not for social factors that enable women but not men to effectively regulate their fertility outside of sexual activity and without their partner’s participation or knowledge.
STEM CELLS
New guidelines from the NIH will let researchers expand on important research, and, presumably, allow them to stop color-coding equipment paid for by different funding sources.
RESEARCH ETHICS
The ethics of data selection, the potential conflicts of peer review, the “soft money lifestyle” of grant recipients, and other issues facing researchers.
BIOETHICS
So what’s the appropriate progressive response to the recent under-the-radar attempts from conservatives to ban the creation of animal-human hybrids? Caricature.
BIOETHICS
Many genetic, reproductive, and biomedical technologies now in development pose new societal challenges, raising questions about how we understand and uphold social justice, human rights, and even our shared humanity.
BIOETHICS
If the Obama administration hopes to move a new bioethics commission beyond the culture wars that embroiled much of the Bush council’s work, substantial efforts will be necessary to bring together now-divided bioethicists for pragmatic discussion.
WONK LAB PODCAST
How many bioethics subfields do we really need to grapple with the issues at the cutting edge of contemporary science? Maybe just one.
Science Progress and American Progress's Doing What Works project teamed up to produce a set of policy proposals that the Obama administration and Congress can adopt to reinvest in the building blocks of American science, innovation, and economic competitiveness. Read the overview of the five reports.
Science Progress proceeds from the propositions that scientific inquiry is among the finest expressions of human excellence, that it is a crucial source of human flourishing, a critical engine of economic growth, and must be dedicated to the common good. Scientific inquiry entails global responsibilities. It should lead to a more equitable, safer, and healthier future for all of humankind.