Dipping in and out of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ recent report on organ donation (available in various forms from this page), I’ve been struck by a couple of things. One is that the Council is painfully keen to maintain its distance from the idea that organs – especially those from live donors – could […]
Category: In the News
Assisted Suicide and the Courts: Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
“Martin”‘s story has been generating a reasonable amount of media and blog attention over the lat few days. (Udo Schuklenk considers some of the Telegraph‘s coverage, for example, and finds it severely wanting.) Paralysed after a stroke, “Martin” wants help to end his life; but his wife doesn’t want to be the one to help […]
Fighting Fire with a Different Kind of Fire?
How much would I love to have been on the ethics committee that was faced with this? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania were interested in a method of treatment for leukaemia that made use of modified versions of white blood cells. Cells were taken from leukaemia patients and genetically modified in two ways: first, they […]
Long-Term Care: Dilnot and Justice
Andrew Dilnot’s report into social care is published today; the full document is here, (2.3 Mb) and Dilnot’s covering letter to the Chancellor and Health Secretary is available here. I’ve not had a chance to read the report in any particular detail yet, but one of the most widely talked-about features (since significantly before the […]
IVF, Abortion, and Mail Mendacity
Much as I try to avoid the Daily Mail, it seems never to be too far out of my view; and it’s not uncommon that people bring it to my attention for one reason or another. On this note, I’m dubiously grateful to Muireann Quigley and Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh for pointing me in the direction […]
Three Quiet Cheers for Uterine Transplants
Charles Foster’s post over at Practical Ethics about the news of the womb-transplant surgery that’s slated to take place in the near future is on the money in many respects. Foster points out that [p]redictably the newspapers loved it. And, equally predictably, clever people from the world’s great universities queued up to be eloquently wise […]
Pratchett and Assisted Dying: A Question of Balance?
If you’ve not yet seen “Choosing to Die”, Terry Pratchett’s film about Dignitas from Monday night, I recommend that you go and watch it now. (I don’t know if it’s available outside the UK: I’m sure it’ll appear on YouTube soon, though; or, if you’re outside th UK, get a Brit to download it and […]
Medicine and the Military Covenant
There’s been a lot in the news over the last couple of days about the Military Covenant, and how there’s a plant to give it a legal footing as part of the Armed Forces Bill. Some of the reportage over the weekend suggested that there would be explicit prioritisation for members and ex-members of the […]
Special Offer! Genital Mutilation!
Today’s dose of righteous anger comes, via Ophelia Benson and Marie Myung-Ok Lee writing in The Atlantic, from the fifth annual Congress on Aesthetic Vaginal Surgery, held just outside Tuscon at the end of last year. The affable organizer of the Tucson event, Dr. Red Alinsod, was an early entrant into cosmetic-gyn, and is recognized for […]
Stem-Cells: To Patent or Not?
In spare moments, I’ve been wondering about the Advocate-General of European Court of Justice’s recent recommendation that patents involving human embryonic stem-cells be prohibited, and the response that it’s generated. One of the best-publicised responses was the letter from Austin Smith et al that appeared in Nature, which complained that the recommendation would be bad […]