Julian Savulescu, the Australian philosopher who is now the director of Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford, is ever controversial. He was a leading figure in the recent controversy over the article arguing that infanticide is morally permissible in the journal he edits, the Journal of Medical Ethics. Nonetheless, he was selected by the Australian Government’s new on-line magazine to showcase Aussie talent.

British scientists have developed an artificial womb in which they have grown mouse embryos. A Nottingham University team led by professor of tissue engineering, Kevin Shakesheff, has created a new device in the form of a soft polymer bowl which mimics the soft tissue of the mammalian uterus in which the embryo implants. Their research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a touchstone for much commentary on contemporary bioethical debates, from moral enhancement to genetic engineering to assisted reproduction. Published in 1933, its vision now seems prophetic – at least in some circles. The rival prophecy of a totalitarian future is George Orwell’s 1984, which projects the logic of Stalinism into the distant future.

Can you cure racism with drugs? Probably not, but a common heart disease medication, propranolol, can affect a person's subconscious attitudes towards race, Oxford University researchers have found. In a study published in Psychopharmacology, researchers gave 18 people the drug propranolol and 18 people a placebo and found that the propranolol group had significantly less subconscious racial bias. There was no significant difference in the groups' explicit attitudes to other races.

A new study in the journal Neuroethics claims that socially conservative views are between 5 to 30 times more likely to be related to anti-social traits than socially liberal views.

With two Italian/Australian bioethicists under attack in the media around the globe over the moral permissibility of infanticide, there are signs of the collywobbles in the profession as a whole. Over at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog, Iain Brassington, presents as evidence an interview with a leading feminist bioethicist, Hilde Lindemann.

A couple of years ago political scientists from the University of California at San Diego made a media splash with their theory (published in Science!) that political preferences are, in part, genetically determined. Whether you vote Democrat or Republican is literally in your DNA. “Genopolitics”, as this theory was dubbed, was supported last year with a report that your politics is related to the structure of your brain. But in the latest issue of the American Political Science Review academics from Duke and Harvard rubbish the notion that two genes could be responsible for the way you vote.

Dutch Prince Johan Friso, brain-damaged after being buried by an avalanche in Austria last month, has been transferred to Wellington Hospital, in London. Doctors believe that the 43-year-old is unlikely to recover consciousness, although will be weeks before they have a clear idea of his prospects.

A Massachusetts judge who ordered an abortion and sterilisation for a pregnant woman with schizophrenia earlier this year has vigorously defended her decision. Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last month after 23 years, made a rare public defence.

An Israeli woman is appealing to the National Insurance Institute to recognise a baby she gave birth to, along with twins born via surrogate mother, as triplets, in an attempt to gain the sizeable benefits granted to mothers of triplets.

In a widely reported address, Pope Benedict XVI has again declared that the only acceptable way for children to be conceived is through intercourse between a man and a woman.

Jill Hawkins, of Brighton, has already acted as surrogate mother to eight children. She is now pregnant with twins. A legal secretary from Brighton, Miss Hawkins is the most prolific surrogate mother in Britain. She will go ahead with the pregnancy despite the serious health complications she faced during her last one in 2010.

So when US presidential hopeful Rick Santorum described the state of euthanasia in the Netherlands on February 3 in a forum in Missouri, he failed to kick a goal. In fact, the Washington Post fact checker, who is the son of Dutch migrants and whose uncle was euthanased, disparaged his “bogus statistics” and awarded him four Pinicchios. He was ridiculed in the New York Times and on Radio Netherlands.

An American doctor argues in the latest issue of the leading journal Bioethics that artificial nutrition and hydration should be withdrawn from all patients in a permanent vegetative state – unless there is clear evidence that they want to be kept alive.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the UK launched a consultation this week on the ethics of new types of technologies and devices that ‘intervene’ in the brain, such as brain-computer interfaces, deep brain stimulation, and neural stem cell therapy.

"Enough. I resigned from #Celltex Therapeutics on & effective 2/28/2012. I am preparing timely, lengthy, pointed comments on the whole matter." This is a Tweet this week from Glenn McGee, the embattled bioethicist who moved from the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB) to a stem cell company in Texas.