By Iain Brassington, Daniela Cutas, Anna Smajdor and Adrian Villalba Suppose that you’re a woman who wants to have a child, but that you know you carry a mutation in your mitochondria that can be predicted, with reasonable certainty, to have a deleterious effect on the quality (and possibly length) of your offspring’s life. A […]
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Abortion, Infanticide, and the Wrongness of Killing
By James G. Robinson What makes it wrong to kill a human being? A simple and commonly invoked answer is that human beings have a right to life and killing them would violate this right. For many ethicists, however, the right to life is not something that we all have simply because we are members […]
Mind for Sale: When Cognitive Function Becomes a Monthly Fee
By Guido Cassinadri In the first episode of the seventh season of Black Mirror, “Common People,” the story follows a couple in which the wife’s life is saved by an experimental therapy (spoiler incoming). The portion of her brain affected by an incurable tumor is replaced with synthetic tissue developed by the company Rivermind. The […]
In the best interests of the child – reporting restrictions in serious medical treatment cases
By Helen Turnham and Dominic Wilkinson Following the release of the judgment in Abbasi and Haastrup [2023] EWCA Civ 331 Abbasi and another (Respondents) v Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Appellant); Haastrup (Respondent) v King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Appellant) – UK Supreme Court, April 2025, a ripple of conversation and concern […]
Abortion in Germany – a (short) moment of hope for decriminalisation?
By Hilary Bowman-Smart, Christin Hempeler. The long-standing political and social debate around abortion has experienced a resurgence in many countries. Over the 20th century, significant progress has been made on reproductive rights, including access to abortion services. However, recent years have seen much of that progress falter or slide backwards. We saw the fall of […]
Weighing informed consent: COVID and Zambian HIV testing
By Benjamin Ferguson, Golden Mwinsa, Kasoka Kasoka, and Frances Griffiths UNAIDS 2023 figures estimate the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Zambia at 9.8%, one of the highest rates in the world. However, the country has made significant progress, halving infections over the past 25 years. Zambia now meets two of UNAIDS three 95% goals: 98% […]
Are ‘AI doctors’ becoming more transparent than human ones?
By Hazem Zohny A major worry with AI in healthcare is the ‘black box’ problem: deep learning AIs reach conclusions without explaining how. In healthcare, where trust is essential, this is a serious problem. Recent AI developments challenge this worry. One example is Google’s Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), an LLM-based system for clinical conversations […]
Deter or care? Dual loyalty conflict in Australia’s immigration detention centres
By Ebony Birchall. Healthcare professionals engaged in Australian immigration detention have publicly advocated against the use of detention for over three decades. The Australian Government’s policy of mandatory and prolonged detention is designed to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat. However, this policy is controversial as prolonged detention of asylum seekers has […]
Unequal access to reprogenetic cognitive enhancement due to consistently high costs
By Alexis Heng Boon Chin and Sayyed Mohamed Muhsin. A survey study by Haining et al. reported a significantly higher approval rating of human cognitive enhancement with reprogenetic technologies such as polygenic embryo screening and germline gene editing among Singaporean versus American respondents. The intensely competitive educational landscape in East Asian Confucian societies such as Singapore is […]
Opportunities Lie Within Beqvez’s Discontinuation
By Rafael Escandon Pfizer announced, surprisingly, on February 20, that they plan to discontinue commercial availability of Beqvez, their recently approved gene therapy (GT) for Hemophilia B. They also announced, in separate communications in mid and late 2024, their terminations of investments in a partnership for a Hemophilia A GT, and their discontinuation of a […]