By Max Mehlman In my new book from the Johns Hopkins University Press, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering, I observe that the government might try to use its power to protect the public health to regulate human genetic engineering, but that given mistakes such as the eugenics sterilization…
By The Petrie-Flom Center Enjoy this week’s Friday Newsletter from Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. As always, slightly edited for our readership.
By Nadia N. Sawicki Google’s informal corporate slogan is “Don’t be evil.” Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 company with a net revenue of 10 billion dollar that prides itself on a commitment to social responsibility. Both companies have pledged to do long-term good in the world, even at the expense of short-term gains, and both…
By I. Glenn Cohen There is a deepening crisis in the funding of legal services in the United States. The House of Representatives has proposed cutting the budget of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), one of the main funders of legal assistance to America’s poor, to an all time low in inflation-adjusted terms. Other sources…
By Susannah Rose During my many years in healthcare as a clinician, researcher and hospital ethics consultant, I am dismayed by how little relative attention is given to ensuring that surrogate decision-makers (or “proxies”) have the “capacity” to make sound medical decisions for adult patients without decision-making capacity. Some attention has been given to this…
By Suzanne M. Rivera, Ph.D. In regulatory and research ethics circles, it is fairly common to hear people say they prefer the term “research participant” to “research subject” because they feel it’s more respectful. They think the word “subject” is demeaning. I respectfully disagree. I think it’s honest. The federal agencies that oversee human research…
By Casey Thomson From policy adoption at the federal level to debate over the health concerns of political figures, this week’s round-up focuses largely on the news for bioethics and health law in the realm of politics. Dan Vorhaus (@genomicslawyer) posted a feature on the history of gene patent litigation and implications for next-generation sequencing technologies….
TODAY, September 28, 2012 3-4:30 pm (reception to follow) Austin 111, Harvard Law School Experimental breakthroughs within the field of regenerative medicine are reported in the media on a daily basis worldwide. Despite this progress, the overwhelming majority of clinical problems for which stem cell-based intervention offers hope remain therapeutically unproven, and a major gap…
By I. Glenn Cohen Boston recently followed many other world cities in implementing a bike share program. As the New York Times recently reported, North American cities face a dilemma: if the European experience is any guide, for bike shares to take off the city must do away with the helmet requirement. That turns out…
By Kimberly Mutcherson Some states have come to terms with commercial surrogacy and create standards to protect parties to contracts and the children born of those contracts. New Jersey, however, just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to surrogacy arrangements. I suppose that is no surprise coming from the state that brought…
