In the minds of most people, human dignity must surely be a cornerstone of bioethics. But as BioEdge has often pointed out, most bioethicists feel differently about it. In fact, low-intensity academic warfare is sputtering along over a 2003 proposal by bioethicist Ruth Macklin that "human dignity" (scare quotes de rigeur) should be junked. It is either too vague to be meaningful or it simply restates other notions, such as respect for autonomy or capacity for rational thought.… [+]

The war on terror has thrown up another bioethical conundrum: forcible drugging of foreigners deported from the United States. The Washington Post has learned that hundreds of deportees were injected with dangerous psychotropic drugs to keep them docile until they are delivered to their home country between 2003 and 2007. "Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes," says the Post. Federal officials have described the… [+]

News that American scientists had created a genetically modified human embryo leaked out over the weekend. Scientists at Cornell University in New York created one from a left-over IVF embryo last year to study how early cells and diseases develop. They presented their findings long ago to a meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. However the media only caught wind of it when it was mentioned in a report from the UK’s fertility regulator, the Human… [+]

Once again, bioethics is on centre stage in the British Parliament as the House of Commons debates a revision of its fertility legislation. This contains a large number of highly controversial proposals. The three best-known would allow the human-animal hybrids for research and the use of saviour siblings in IVF treatment and would abolish the need for a father in eligibility for IVF treatment. On these three government MPs will be allowed a conscience vote. However, there are… [+]

A disturbing profile in the Guardian of the one leading lights of the right-to-die movement, the Rev. George Exoo, shows that there is a hierarchy of repute even amongst fans of assisted suicide. Exoo is a "a gay, liberal, libertarian Unitarian preacher, cultured, funny, charming", says Jon Ronson, who has just made a documentary about him for British television. He is also an embarrassment for his colleagues.

Exoo surfaced in the media when he helped a… [+]

The Irish Council for Bioethics recently recommended by a unanimous vote that frozen IVF embryos could be destroyed for research to generate human embryonic stem cell lines. Now a group of Irish academics and scientists have written an open letter criticising its proposals in order to dispel the impression that they represent the consensus of the academic and biomedical communities. They say that human beings have a unique moral status, regardless of their stage of development

"The… [+]

One of the most depressing films you could possibly see is On the Beach, a 1959 Hollywood melodrama with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner about Melbourne after World War III (which happened in 1964). Fallout from the Northern Hemisphere, where everyone has dropped off the perch, is drifting slowly over Australia, blanketing the continent with death. The enlightened government of the day distributes free suicide pills and injections so that no one need suffer the agony of terminal radiation… [+]