One of the more interesting figures in contemporary bioethics is Oxford’s Julian Savulescu. An Australian who is a former student of Peter Singer, he boldly rides utilitarian theories wherever they wander, regardless of unsettling this might seem to his readers. As a fan of eugenics and human enhancement, he is a weathervane for bioethics which is sceptical of human dignity. So it was interesting to read on his blog that he has rejected one of the cornerstones of Enlightenment humanism, equality:

“Equality is an ideal born of the vice, or one of the seven deadly sins, of envy. It has no intrinsic value but panders to our vicious nature to be envious of others…

“Equality has no intrinsic value. Our commitment should be to the lives of individual people not to human ideals like equality.

“Equality is a dominant moral ideal in contemporary society. Egalitarianism is the stated principle for the [National Health Service}: equal treatment for equal need. Equality might be a good rule of thumb but it should not be a final regulative ideal. “ ~ Julian Savulescu’s blog, June 17

Last year British doctor and philosopher Raymond Tallis published a cranky article in The New Humanist about “neurotrash” which complained about the exuberant proliferation of neuros: “If you come across a new discipline with the prefix ‘neuro’ and it is not to do with the nervous system itself, switch on your bullshit detector. If it has society in its sights, reach for your gun. Bring on the neurosceptics.”

Heeding his summons, Eran Klein, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, has published an article in the journal Neuroethics entitled “Is There a Need for Clinical Neuroskepticism?”

“It is far from clear that a future world in which everyone wears neurospectacles is the best one available to us. Neuroscience has changed the way we understand ourselves and no doubt will continue to do so, often for the better. But it provides just one way to encounter the world. Enveloping ourselves in a discourse of the ‘neuro’ — though perhaps seductive at times — can also crowd out other valuable ways of talking about and understanding ourselves and our place in the world. Sometimes talk of neurons, synapses, and circuits must give way to talk of open futures, distributive justice, and perfectionism. A healthy dose of neuroskepticism may be just what’s needed for medicine to travel along neurotechnology’s golden road.” ~ Neuroethics, Aug 17

German doctors and medical historians have criticised the German Medical Association’s present and previous presidents for omitting the Nazi past of another former president in a recent obituary in Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the German counterpart of the BMJ. The article concluded by stating that Hans Joachim Sewering "rendered outstanding services to the protection of ethical values in medical practice".

The German medical community’s considerable efforts to come to terms with the Nazi past make this omission incomprehensible, say 81 signatories to an open letter.

The editor countered that a previous short article had mentioned Sewering’s Nazi past. He also said the German Medical Association and the Deutsches Ärzteblatt had tried hard to shed light on the Nazi period by  commissioning independent research projects.

Professor Sewering was a member of both the Nazi Party and the SS. He began work in a lung hospital for disabled children near Munich in 1942. Between June 1943 and February 1945 he sent at least nine children to another hospital known for euthanasia. Five of them died there from malnutrition. However, witnesses accused him of involvement in the intentional starvation and drugging of over 900 mentally and physically disabled patients.

After the war, he became an official in the German and Bavarian Medical Associations and was president of the German Medical Association from 1973 to 1978. His Nazi past emerged in 1993 when he sought to become president of the World Medical Association. He failed but remained an honoured member of the national association and received many distinctions. ~ BMJ, Aug 16

After a three-year investigation Harvard University has admitted that a renowned expert on the evolution of morality has engaged in scientific misconduct. Professor Marc Hauser, a popular lecturer, and an influential exponent of the neurological basis for human moral codes, is alleged to have been responsible for “eight instances of scientific misconduct”.

University authorities cited “problems involving data acquisition, data analysis, data retention, and the reporting of research methodologies and results” but gave few details. However, one of his research assistants told the Cronicle of Higher Education that “the professor was reporting bogus data and … aggressively pushed back against those who questioned his findings or asked for verification”.

Apparently his colleagues complained to the Universtiy when they noticed that Professor Hauser fabricated responses made by rhesus monkeys when he tested whether they could recognise speech patterns.

Professor Hauser told The New York Times, “I acknowledge that I made some significant mistakes”. He said that he was “deeply sorry for the problems this case had caused to my students, my colleagues and my university.” ~ New York Times, Aug 20  

Katrina Clark, 21, and Lindsay Greenawalt, 25, were both conceived with donor sperm and raised by single mothers. Katrina succeeded in finding her biological fathers and Lindsay failed. According to a report from Associated Press, they are part of an increasingly outspoken generation of sperm donor offspring. Speaking from experience, they have advocated publically for the rights of sperm donor children, in particular their right to know their biological fathers.

“The loss associated with being donor conceived is something that I will carry for the rest of my life, and that to deliberately create a human being with that loss is unethical,” Ms Greenwalt wrote recently on her blog, Confessions of a Cryokid.

All she knows about her father is that he is 49, attended college, and has brown hair and greenish eyes. She knows a few medical details, thanks to a recent update sent by her father to the Xytex sperm bank in Augusta, Georgia. “He knows I'm looking for him — and he doesn't want to make contact,” Greenawalt said.

Ms Clark found her father fairly quickly. However, their communication “has been pretty much nonexistent”, and they have not met face-to-face. "I still wonder about him," she added. "There's so much about him I still don't know."

US sperm banks are increasingly offering identity-release policies, in which donors agree to allow their offspring to contact them once they reach age 18. However, many donors still choose to remain anonymous. A past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Dr Jamie Grifo of New York University's Fertility Center, told AP that it is not a good idea. "It may not be a popular point of view, but when these decisions are made by donor and a parent, the child doesn't have a say," he said. "If the contract is for it to be anonymous, it should remain anonymous, and the child just has to deal with that." ~ AP, Aug 16

The University of California, Berkeley will not release personal genetic information to incoming students who participated in an orientation program about genetics. The program “Bring Your Genes to Cal” was criticised by the California Department of Public Health because state law prohibits gene testing outside a medical setting.

Mark Schlissel, dean of biological sciences, said he disagreed with the department’s ruling that advance approval for testing was required from physicians, and that the testing should be done in clinical labs with special licences rather than by university technicians. He also argued that the project should be exempted from the state rules because it was an educational exercise.

Privacy advocates and ethicists had criticised the test as a disturbing use of genetic data. Some students felt that they were being quietly coerced into participating, and that their saliva samples and resulting personal information would not be sufficiently protected. ~ LA Times, Aug 13

The US Food and Drug Administration has embarked upon a legal battle to extend its authority over stem cell treatments. It has enjoined a Colorado company, Regenerative Sciences, from treating patients with stem cells from their own bone marrow or synovial fluid. These are being injected to treat fractures, torn tendons and other ailments. The clinic charges patients US$7,000–9,000 and does about 20 procedures every month.

Christopher Centeno, the medical director of the company, is ready for a fight. He disputes the FDA’s jurisdiction. Since the company uses a patient’s own cells, as IVF clinics do, it is none of the FDA’s business.

Both sides realise that the case could be a landmark decision. Conventional stem cell researchers are wary of shady operators who claim therapeutic benefits for stem cells without much research. Douglas Sipp, of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, worries about what will happen if Centeno’s company wins in the courts. "Companies would likely feel empowered to ignore requirements for demonstrable safety and efficacy of autologous medicinal products, creating an 'anything goes' atmosphere," he told Nature.

And Centeno agrees: "If we win, the entire regulatory structure for autologous cell processing, with or without culture, will be rewritten such that any physician using good practices and treating patients responsibly can use stem cells as part of his or her medical practice," he says. ~ Nature, Aug 17

Australia may crack down on the billion-dollar cosmetic surgery industry’s pitch for teenage business. According to the Sunday Age, a government report recommends that teens have mandatory psychological examinations and a three-month cooling-off period.

Incentives such as gifts, discounts or loans would be banned together with advertising using “before and after” shots of breast enlargements, nose jobs and tummy tucks.

The Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council says there is a “disturbing trend” in young people seeking cosmetic surgery and treatments such as Botox, liposuction and laser therapy. “Demand for such procedures is fuelled by lifestyle choices to enhance physical appearance and boost confidence, rather than medical need,” the report states.

At the moment, any registered doctor can advertise as a cosmetic surgeon. The report recommends that only doctors formally trained in plastic surgery be allowed to describe themselves as cosmetic surgeons. ~ Sydney Morning Herald, Aug 15

A spinal fluid tap may be 100% accurate in predicting whether a patient will develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Archives of Neurology.

According to the New York Times, until now the presence of the disease could only be confirmed after an autopsy, although it begins ten or more years before symptoms appear. But a simple spinal tap could predict whether someone has the progressive and incurable brain disease and identify them as potential subjects for research into cures. “This is what everyone is looking for, the bull’s-eye of perfect predictive accuracy,” said Dr Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia medical school.

The news was widely reported in the media and shot to the top of the most-read articles in the Times. The conumdrums of a screening test for Alzheimer’s were clear to everyone. Would healthy people want to know that they have a disease for which there is no cure? How would they react?

For researchers, the benefits are obvious. It would be far more efficient to test potential treatments on people in the initial stage of the disease. In an accompanying editorial, two experts declared that spinal taps may become a routine “screening test to identify clinically healthy individuals at risk”. This would be helpful in developing “early application of treatments to delay onset of symptoms or slow progression of cognitive impairments”.

Bioethicist Jonathan Moreno, of the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out in The New Republic that the existence of an accurate and relatively simple test creates many policy problems. As many as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s. How will that affect their health insurance? How will it affect families? Will it lead to suicide or will it encourage people to put their affairs in order? ~ New York Times, Aug 9

Morality is a tricky business. If you are an expert in preaching about it, people tend to hold you to a higher standard of probity. Perhaps this is what has made allegations of academic misconduct against one of the leading exponents of the “new science of morality” so disturbing for Bostonians. 

Harvard professor Marc D. Hauser has persuasively argued that no action is inherently wrong. "We generally do not commit wrong acts because we recognize that they are wrong and because we do not want to pay the emotional price of doing something we perceive as wrong," he says. As an evolutionary biologist, he is fascinated by the idea of evil and thinks that his research can shed light on its origin and its attraction. “I believe that science, and scientists, have an important role to play in shaping the moral agenda. We have an obligation to use facts and reason to guide what we ought to do,” he contended forcefully in a recent essay on The Edge.

Unfortunately, Professor Hauser has just taken a year-long leave after Harvard found evidence of faked results in some of his research. What sparked the investigation was a 2002 paper in the journal Cognition on whether monkeys learn rules. It is now being formally retracted because the data do not support the findings.

This is not the only paper under a cloud. Last month the prestigious British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B published a correction to one of Hauser’s papers and now Science is looking at a 2007 paper.

“This retraction creates a quandary for those of us in the field about whether other results are to be trusted as well, especially since there are other papers currently being reconsidered by other journals as well,” Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told the Boston Globe.  “If scientists can’t trust published papers, the whole process breaks down.”

Professor Hauser has been one of Harvard’s most popular teachers and is currently working on a new book with the provisional title, “Evilicious: Explaining Our Evolved Taste for Being Bad.’ ~ Boston Globe, Aug 10