September 16th, 2020World Health Organisation-recommended campaigns to circumcise millions of African boys and men to reduce HIV transmission are based more on systemic racism and “neo-colonialism” than sound scientific research, according to a critical appraisal...
May 27th, 2020
“Immunity passports” – certificates issued to people who have had COVID-19 and are presumed immune to the disease – would cause more problems than they solve, according to two bioethicists in a Nature Comment article.
Natalie Kofler and...
March 4th, 2020
Spain and Portugal are moving towards legalising euthanasia. They should think again, writes Kevin Yuill who teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland in a report on the Spiked site.
Yuill writes:
Spain and Portugal have...
February 5th, 2020
A row over scientific fraud at the highest level of British academia has led to calls for one of the country’s leading geneticists and highest-paid university chiefs to leave his posts, reports The Guardian . David Latchman, professor of...
March 27th, 2019A group of ethicists and scientists – including some of the inventors of CRISPR – have called for a moratorium on all clinical uses of germline editing. But the leaders of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine...
March 20th, 2019Rights to dignity and ‘security in and control over their body’, both entrenched in the Bill of Rights, clearly provide a basis for the acceptance of euthanasia, and, at the very least, physician-administered euthanasia, write Tseliso...
December 12th, 2018South Africa needs to overhaul the laws and ethical guidelines that govern its genetics research, testing and databases, says its national science academy – especially given the country’s troubled history of race-based discrimination.
The...
November 28th, 2018
Significant doubts have been expressed, as well as international outrage, over unverified claims from a Chinese scientist that he has helped make the world's first genetically edited babies, reports BBC News. Professor He Jiankui says the twin...
November 7th, 2018Medical associations have condemned the alleged role of the top UK-trained Saudi forensic pathologist had in the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, reports The Lancet.
The former Glasgow University student, Dr Salah al-Tubaigy, is...
October 3rd, 2018
Enthusiasm for an emerging digital health tool, the smart pill, is on the rise but researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago caution health care providers and policymakers to slow down when it comes to allowing this technology in...
July 25th, 2018An independent UK inquiry into the ethical issues surrounding genetically altering a human embryo has found there is 'no absolute reason not to pursue it'.
The inquiry by the Nuffield Council concludes that any invention should be guided by two...
More than half of medical students at Stellenbosch University feel the practices of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) should be legalised in South Africa, and if a patient had a terminal disease with intractable suffering, 41.9% of...
May 2nd, 2018The British baby Alfie Evans has died, bringing into the spotlight a host of legal and ethical issues around the treatment of patients in a semi-vegetative state on life support. It also has placed hospitals and their staff at the epicentre of...
April 25th, 2018The Austrian doctor after whom Asperger syndrome is named was an active participant in the Nazi regime, assisting in the Third Reich’s so-called euthanasia programme and supporting the concept of racial hygiene by deeming certain children unworthy...
March 14th, 2018Bills are being placed before US state legislatures that would make it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion if sought 'solely' because the foetus has Down's syndrome. It is the latest twist in the political debate over abortion, writes The...
February 14th, 2018The practice of injecting women with the 'controversial' conraceptive Depo-Provera without proper informed consent – especially those who are poor, black and using the public health sector – is still happening, writes Amy Green of Health...
