By Katherine Drabiak Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on children born from pronuclear genome transfer (sometimes called “3-parent IVF,” “mitochondrial donation” or “mitochondrial replacement therapy”) at Newcastle Fertility Center in the United Kingdom. Twenty-two women underwent the procedure, which resulted in eight children, who now range in age from six months to over two […]
Latest articles
From Lecture to Book: A Medical Ethicist’s Experience with Self-publishing
By Daniel Sokol Earlier this year, I was invited by the Dr Prem Nath Berry Educational Trust, a medical charity, to deliver a new lecture in India on medical ethics. At that time, I was also thinking of a suitable topic for my presidential lecture at the Osler Club of London, a medical society founded […]
USAID Cuts: A Moral Failure
By G. Owen Schaefer The effects of recent massive cuts to USAID are still unfolding, but the likely catastrophic consequences for the globe are evident. A recent analysis estimated that the program prevented over 90 million deaths in the past two decades due to efforts in treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other […]
Monash IVF Mix-ups: Who gets the child?
By Sinead Prince and Julian Savulescu Imagine discovering that the child you gestated and have been raising for two years isn’t genetically yours – but someone else’s embryo was implanted by mistake. This isn’t science fiction; it happened in Victoria, Australia, in 2025. The case raises a profound question that courts, families, and society must […]
What Does It Mean to Provide Medicine in a World of Declining Trust?
By Crystal Lemus What does it really mean to “provide medicine”? For many, the image is clinical—white coats, prescription pads, MRI scans, and protocols. But at its philosophical core, medicine is a moral act: one human being entering into the vulnerability of another. The practice of medicine is rooted in a complex interplay between trust, […]
The Fence Around Us: How India’s Medical System Enables Cultural Misogyny
By Anonymous* A baby girl starved to death in a South Indian hospital. No one was held accountable. I first heard about her during a forensic medicine lecture on starvation. The regular faculty were away, so a professor from a different specialty stepped in. As she listed various types of starvation, she paused to reflect […]
Why mandatory chemical castration could be ethically acceptable
By Lisa Forsberg and Thomas Douglas. The UK’s Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood, is considering a ‘national rollout of voluntary chemical castration for sex offenders’. Chemical castration uses medications that lower testosterone activity with the intention of reducing libido. Extending use of chemical castration in sex offenders is one of the recommendations of […]
Do Brain Death guidelines conflict with reproductive autonomy?
By L. Syd M Johnson When Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria (BD/DNC) occurs during pregnancy, complex questions emerge concerning the moral and legal status of the brain dead pregnant person, the continuation of life-sustaining treatment to save a fetus, the exploitation of pregnant bodies, and the potential conflicts between the prior, autonomous wishes of pregnant […]
Hi, I’m a hospice doctor. Here’s your bill.
By Jennifer Eitingon, MD, with Margaret P Battin, PhD When asked about the often serious ethical quandaries hospice providers are often faced when providing care for a patient nearing death, the one thing that plagues most is not the medical aspect of how to manage suffering, nor the existential questions of how we, as embodied […]
Adriana Smith is Far From the First Incubator
By Joel Cox & Allison Bajada “We’re just human incubators to them,” writes Gonzalez-Ramirez for The Cut. Those who are disturbed by the recent case of Adriana Smith – like this author – may not realize how often bodies are used as incubators through normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) for organ donation. For those unaware, doctors […]