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Bioethics, Development, Risks, Sci/Tech May 15, 2013

Scientists Create First Cloned Human Embryo

The process that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 has now been proven successful in humans. Scientists have made an embryonic clone of a person, using DNA from that person’s skin cells. In the future, such a clone could be a source of stem cells, for super-personalized therapies made from people’s own DNA.

It’s unlikely that this clone could develop into a human, say the scientists, a team of biologists from the U.S. and Thailand. The team plans to publish a paper in the future detailing why not, Nature reported.

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Bioethics, Development, Sci/Tech May 2, 2013

Scientists create hybrid flu that can go airborne

A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs. The results are published inScience1. Flu hybrids can arise naturally when two viral strains infect the same cell and exchange genes. This process, known as reassortment, produced the strains responsible for at least three past flu pandemics, including the one in 2009. There is no evidence that H5N1 and H1N1 have reassorted naturally yet, but they have many opportunities to do so.

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Bioethics, GeoPolitics, Policy May 1, 2013

Burma proposes family planning regime to control Muslims

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said the recommendation that the population Muslims should be controlled in the long term was outrageous. “It’s quite chilling to start talking about limiting births of one particular group,” he said. “Will coercive measures get taken on the ground even if the union government says people can take this voluntarily?”

The report said concerns expressed by Buddhists in Rakhine state over the rising population of Muslims they see as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh had “undermined peaceful coexistence” between the two groups. It said the introduction of family planning education “would go some way to mitigating” the crisis.

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech April 8, 2013

“In vitro eugenics” is coming, predicts Australian bioethicist

The production of embryos using sperm and eggs generated with stem cells rather than through sex would also be useful in studying genetic diseases and for drug testing. But Dr Sparrow points out that it would be splendid for eugenics. Generations of people could be created in Petri dishes, eliminating unsatisfactory genes in the quest for better human beings. “In effect,” he writes enthusiastically, “scientists will be able to breed human beings with the same (or greater) degree of sophistication with which we currently breed plants and animals.”

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Bioethics, Economy, Human Rights March 28, 2013

Do you own your genes, or can Big Pharma patent them?

Somebody should check and make sure that Kim Dotcom hasn’t started funding any research in genetics. Maybe those guys from the Pirate Bay, too. With a paper that must send chills of fear and vindication down the spine of every internet freedom fighter, researchers from Cornell University this week presented evidence that genetic copyright is a “direct threat to genomic liberty.” Could this be the newest, most easily altruistic frontier in copyright banditry?

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech March 27, 2013

Brain Scan Predicts Whether Convicts Will Re-Offend: Welcome To The Sci-Fi Future

In a twist that evokes the dystopian science fiction of writer Philip K. Dick, neuroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner.The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the prisoners’ brains during computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions.

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech March 25, 2013

How future apps will target and market your brainwaves

Electroencephalography, which is widely known as a medical diagnostic test has more potential uses. An EEG device is typically a headset with a small number of electrodes placed on different parts of the skull in order to detect the electrical signals made by your brainwaves.

One company, Government Works Inc., is developing BCI headsets for lie detection and criminal investigations. By measuring a person’s responses to questions and images, the company claims to be able to determine whether that person has knowledge of certain information or events (leading to conclusions, for instance, about whether that person was at a crime scene).

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Bioethics, GeoPolitics, Sci/Tech March 18, 2013

China Is Engineering Genius Babies

At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.

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Bioethics, Human Rights, Sci/Tech February 19, 2013

Designing Life: Should Babies Be Genetically Engineered?

The increasing power and accessibility of genetic technology may one day give parents the option of modifying their unborn children, in order to spare offspring from disease or, conceivably, make them tall, well muscled, intelligent or otherwise blessed with desirable traits.

Would this change mean empowering parents to give their children the best start possible? Or would it mean designer babies who could face unforeseen genetic problems? Experts debated on Wednesday evening (Feb. 13) whether prenatal engineering should be banned in the United States.

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Bioethics, Human Rights February 11, 2013

Indian Women Dumped In Field After Mass Sterilisation Campaign

The women had all undergone surgical procedures at a hospital in the Malda district of West Bengal, around 360 kilometres (220 miles) north of Kolkata, which officials admitted was not equipped to accommodate such a large number of patients. The scandal came to light after news channel NDTV aired amateur footage of unconscious women being carried out of the hospital by men and then placed on open land.“This is inhuman and we have ordered a probe into the incident,” he added.

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Bioethics, Risks January 13, 2013

Terrorism likely behind avian flu outbreak: Indonesia intelligence

Fretting that terrorists might one day unleash bioweapons in Indonesia, the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) says it will monitor the recent outbreak of a new strain of avian influenza in Indonesia.

BIN chief Lt. Gen. Marciano Norman said that the agency was on alert and would continue to monitor the spread of the new strain, identified as H5N1 clade 2.3.2, which has re-portedly been behind the deaths of tens of thousands of ducks in the nation.

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Bioethics, Human Rights, Sci/Tech December 18, 2012

Surveillance State: Ecuador Implements “World’s First” Countrywide Facial- and Voice-Recognition System

Ecuador has installed a nationwide system that lets government officials ID “several million” people by their voices and faces, Slate reported. If an Ecuadorian agency taps a phone line, for example, it is now able to match the voices in a call with a database of “voiceprints” of known criminals, suspects and persons of interest. The voice system is 97 percent accurate, says the system’s maker, SpeechPro

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech August 26, 2012

Inception helmet creates alternative reality

The Substitutional Reality (SR) system, developed by researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute’s Laboratory for Adaptive Intelligence, is made of cheap, commercially available electronic components: a panoramic video camera used for recording, a computer for storing the recorded footage, and a head-mounted visual display that can switch seamlessly between the recorded footage and a live feed captured by a camera and microphone attached to it.

“In a dream, we naturally accept what is happening and hardly doubt its reality, however unrealistic it may seem on reflection.” says Keisuke Suzuki, the lead author of a recent paper describing the SR system. “Our motivation is to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying our strong conviction in reality. How can people trust what they perceive?

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech August 22, 2012

Hackers backdoor the human brain, successfully extract sensitive data

With a chilling hint of the not-so-distant future, researchers at the Usenix Security conference have demonstrated a zero-day vulnerability in your brain. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it’s possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you’d rather keep secret.

In a real-world scenario, the researchers foresee a game that is specially tailored by hackers to extract sensitive information from your brain — or perhaps an attack vector that also uses social engineering to lull you into a false sense of security. It’s harder to extract data from someone who knows they’re being attacked — as interrogators and torturers well know.

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Bioethics, Development August 17, 2012

Yummy: 3D printed meat development funded

Scientists have already been experimenting with bio-printing in the field of regenerative medicine. The hope is that if you need a kidney transplant in the future, doctors will simply be able to print you a new one.

Apparently, growing meat is easier than growing organs. In Modern Meadow’s grant application to the Department of Agriculture, the company points out that ”as meat is a post mortem tissue, the vascularization of the final product is less critical than in medical applications.” Mmm, I can smell that sizzling bio-printed post mortem tissue already.

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Bioethics, Development, Sci/Tech July 19, 2012

2045 Avatar Project: Do Billionaires Crave Eternal Life?

A brain in a bot is just a way station to Nirvana, which would ultimately involve downloading the brain’s contents into a computer. That and other tweaks to the technology will take a few decades, Itskov says, which is why he calls his project the2045 Initiative. It held its first meeting in Moscow in February and has just opened an office in San Francisco. It is planning a big meeting in New York’s Lincoln Center in June 2013.

In ages past, those who would cheat Death generally talked of an elixir, but nowadays their line of patter tends to run in a cybernetic vein.

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Bioethics, Development, Military, Sci/Tech July 15, 2012

Is it time for a genetically engineered Superman?

So: want to have Superman-like strength? The military is developing exoskeletons that strap onto soldier’s bodies and do the heavy lifting, literally. Soldiers in the field typically tote upwards of 100 pounds on their backs. Strap-on exoskeletons could make this vastly less stressful while also reducing the back injuries that are endemic in the army. Want to stave off the cognitive deficits caused by too little sleep?

Or how about getting by on four hours a night? Something called transcranial magnetic stimulation can help you do that. Or maybe you’d like to move objects using only the power of your mind? It’s possible – and you don’t have to be Uri Geller. In 2011, the Guinness Book of World Records issued an award to the NeuroSky MindWave, a brainwave reader, for the “heaviest machine moved using a brain control interface.”

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Bioethics, News, Sci/Tech July 5, 2012

Life Imitating Art: Robot avatar body controlled by thought alone

For the first time, a person lying in an fMRI machine has controlled a robot hundreds of kilometers away using thought alone.

.”The ultimate goal is to create a surrogate, like in Avatar, although that’s a long way off yet,” says Abderrahmane Kheddar, director of the joint robotics laboratory at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan.

Teleoperated robots, those that can be remotely controlled by a human, have been around for decades. Kheddar and his colleagues are going a step further.

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Bioethics, News, Policy, Systemic Abuse July 5, 2012

Indian police ‘still using truth serum’

It is the sort of scene that belongs in a film noir, not a 21st-century democracy: an uncooperative suspect being injected with a dose of “truth serum” in an attempt to elicit a confession. But some detectives in

India still swear by so-called narcoanalysis despite India’s highest court ruling that it was was not only unreliable but also “cruel, inhuman and degrading”.

The technique is back in the news after officers from India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) asked a judge for permission to administer Sodium Pentothal to a high-profile Indian politician and his financial adviser embroiled in a corruption case.

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Bioethics, Development, Policy, Population June 11, 2012

Global Family Planning Summit aim to reverse years of family planning neglect

A major summit is being planned for July that aims to pour money into family planning in the developing world after almost two decades of neglect, particularly during the Bush years.

Parallel to this, millions of dollars are being spent by the Gates Foundation on developing more efficient forms of contraception, particularly injections that might only be required once every six months or annually.

The executive director of the UN Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin, in an interview with the Guardian, described proposals at the summit to turn family planning into a global movement as “transformational”.

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Bioethics, News, Sci/Tech May 2, 2012

A Future of Self-Surveillance?: Tech Pioneers Track Bodily Functions Day and Night

Larry Smarr’s large intestine appears to float in the middle of the room, nestled like a stuffed sausage between his other virtual organs.

Smarr, a computer science professor, adjusts the dark-tinted 3D glasses perched on his nose and picks up an electronic pointer. “And this is where the wall of my colon is inflamed,” he says, pointing out a spot where the intestinal walls are indeed noticeably swollen.

A supercomputer combined MRI images of the 63-year-old professor to create the three-dimensional illusion now projected on the wall. It gives the impression that the viewer could go for a stroll inside the researcher’s abdomen.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everybody could look inside their own bodies like that?” asks Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology (Calit2) in La Jolla, near San Diego.

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Analysis, Bioethics, Development, Public Relations April 26, 2012

Brain scans of small group of people can predict actions of entire populations

Brain scans of a small group of people can predict the actions of entire populations, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon and the University of California at Los Angeles.

The findings are relevant to political advertising, commercial market research and public health campaigns, and broaden the use of brain imaging from a diagnostic to a predictive tool.

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Bioethics, Flashpoints, Protest, Sci/Tech April 24, 2012

Russian Defense ministry tests electromagnetic weapon, might use it to suppress mass protests

Experts from the science and research center of Russia’s Defense Ministry are testing a unique electromagnetic weapon with non-lethal effects, Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.

As the center’s director, Dmitry Soskov said, the weapon would be most effective in local conflicts, where there is no solid frontline. It would also be very useful while suppressing mass riots in cities.

“The new weapon is designed to have non-lethal effects on humans. It has a striking factor in the form of electromagnetic radiation of very high frequency. The directed ray causes intolerable pain,” Soskov said.

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Bioethics, Population, Systemic Abuse April 12, 2012

Uzbekistan’s policy of secretly sterilising women

The BBC has been told by doctors that Uzbekistan is running a secret programme to sterilise women – and has talked to women sterilised without their knowledge or consent.

Adolat has striking looks, a quiet voice and a secret that she finds deeply shameful.

She knows what happened is not her fault, but she cannot help feeling guilty about it.

Adolat comes from Uzbekistan, where life centres around children and a big family is the definition of personal success. Adolat thinks of herself as a failure.

“What am I after what happened to me?” she says as her hand strokes her daughter’s hair – the girl whose birth changed Adolat’s life.

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Bioethics, Protest April 9, 2012

Riots may be controlled with chemicals

Future riots could be quelled by projectiles containing chemical irritants fired bypolice using new weapons that are now in the final stages of development.

The Discriminating Irritant Projectile (Dip) has been under development by the Home Office’s centre for applied science and technology (Cast) as a potential replacement for plastic bullets.

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that last summer’s riots in England provided a major impetus to Home Office research into new-generation riot control technology, ranging from the Dip to even more curious weaponry described by Cast technicians as “skunk oil”.

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Bioethics, Black Market, Systemic Abuse March 16, 2012

Chinese Regime Indirectly Admits Organ Harvesting: Bioethics Professor

Professor Arthur Caplan heads the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He said on Tuesday that China’s Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu may have confirmed what some rights group have long suspected—that the Chinese regime has been harvesting organs from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners as part of the regime’s persecution of the spiritual practice.
Huang acknowledged last week that executed prisoners remained the primary source of organs for the country’s expanding organ transplant industry.
[Professor Arthur Caplan, Director of the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania]:
“I found it startling, because no one has actually said anything from that official source that high up about the use of prisoners.”

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech March 11, 2012

Marketing to Your DNA: The Suits Want To Know More About You

The potential for DNA marketing was presented yesterday at SXSW by Paul Saarinen, of the agency Yamamoto in Minneapolis, and Dr. Scott Fahrenkrug of the University of Minnesota (Disclosure. I wasn’t there and rely on the Social Media Today report for the detail).

Rohan Jay Miller, author, explains:

“If a company could access your DNA and could find out you like bitter tastes or are lactose intolerant they could market very specifically to your tastes. Sequencing a person DNA used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the cost is dropping dramatically. Today it costs $1,000 to sequence your DNA, which provides about a million points of data about your body.”

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Bioethics, Development, Sci/Tech February 20, 2012

Disturbing ‘Gattacan’ Actions: Can You Be Fired for Your Genes?

The number of complaints about genetic discrimination are on the rise

In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she had been fired because she carries genes that predispose her to cancer. Fink quickly became the public face for the cutting edge of civil rights: genetic discrimination.

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Bioethics, SiGiNT February 17, 2012

Microchip Implant Gives Medication On Command

For people who face frequent needle jabs to treat chronic conditions, a new technology is on the horizon that might make treatment a lot less painful.

Researchers report that a new wirelessly controlled microchip, implanted under the skin, can safely and reliably give osteoporosis patients the daily dose of a drug that they need for at least 20 days in a row. The findings were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver and published online Thursday in Science Translational Medicine.

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Bioethics, Military, Sci/Tech February 17, 2012

More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers

Our ability to “upgrade” the bodies of soldiers through drugs, implants, and exoskeletons may be outstripping the ethical norms of war as we’ve understood them.

If we can engineer a soldier who can resist torture, would it still be wrong to torture this person with the usual methods? Starvation and sleep deprivation won’t affect a super-soldier who doesn’t need to sleep or eat. Beatings and electric shocks won’t break someone who can’t feel pain or fear like we do. This isn’t a comic-book story, but plausible scenarios based on actual military projects today.

In the next generation, our warfighters may be able toeat grass,communicate telepathically,resist stress, climb walls like a lizard, and much more. Impossible?

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Bioethics, Sci/Tech January 30, 2012

Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?

If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a “morality pill” — a drug that makes us more likely to help? Given the many other studies linking biochemical conditions to mood and behavior, and the proliferation of drugs to modify them that have followed, the idea is not far-fetched. If so, would people choose to take it? Could criminals be given the option, as an alternative to prison, of a drug-releasing implant that would make them less likely to harm others? Might governments begin screening people to discover those most likely to commit crimes? Those who are at much greater risk of committing a crime might be offered the morality pill; if they refused, they might be required to wear a tracking device that would show where they had been at any given time, so that they would know that if they did commit a crime, they would be detected.

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Bioethics, News, Sci/Tech December 15, 2011

DNA Hackers: Synthetic biology weaponized virus, zero-day exploit to infect your brain?

rom the let’s get futuristically freaky department, future hacking crimes could take a decidedly sinister twist; not hacking to breach systems but brains, bodies and behaviors. This DNA hacking goes way beyond potentially using police bees to bust biohackers, or even storing unhackable data in box of bio-encrypted bacteria. It’s not science fiction to hack insulin pumps or to use jamming signals to stop hackers from lethal pacemaker attacks, but now bioengineers and security futurists are warning that the day is coming when criminals and bioterrorists hunt for vulnerabilities that will give a new meaning to zero-day exploits. In the future, a weaponized virus will aim to infect you, your brain and body biology, and not just your computer or mobile device.

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Bioethics, Population December 10, 2011

Sterilisation: Peru’s darkest secret

That allegation may now finally be tested in court, after Peru’s Attorney General last month reopened an investigation into the alleged forced sterilisations during the government of Alberto Fujimori, President from 1990 to 2000, who is currently serving a 25-year prison term for embezzlement and directing death squads during the crackdown against the Maoist Shining Path.

The investigation will look at the entire issue of forced sterilisations while focusing on one sample case, of Mamerita Mestanza, a 33-year-old, Quechua-speaking mother-of-seven, from the Andean region of Cajamarca. She died in 1998 from complications from sterilisation surgery that health officials allegedly harassed her into accepting.

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Bioethics, News, Population November 16, 2011

893 Turks die in major drug companies’ experiments

Drug experimentations conducted by pharmaceutical giants have killed 893 Turks, the Independent reported.

Turkey is listed sixth of the countries that report the most deaths due to experimentations, with India taking the lead at over 1,700 victims who lost their lives during experiments run by American, British and European pharmaceutical companies.

The Independent’s investigation revealed plenty of gruesome details including experiments cancelled following abuses of illiterate or uninformed subjects in need of either money or treatment.

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Bioethics, Population October 24, 2011

Paul Ehrlich, a prophet of global population doom who is gloomier than ever

The population of Earth has doubled since Paul Ehrlich first warned the world that there were too many humans. Three and a half billion people later, he is more pessimistic than ever, estimating there is only a 10% chance of avoiding a collapse of global civilisation.

“Among the knowledgeable people there is no more conversation about whether the danger is real,” Ehrlich told the Guardian. “Civilisations have collapsed before: the question is whether we can avoid the first time [an] entire global civilisation has given us the opportunity of having the whole mass collapse.”

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Bioethics, Policy October 17, 2011

UK Kevorkian Politics: Elderly patients condemned to early death by secret use of do not resuscitate orders

* Inspectors who visited Queen Elizabeth Hospital, run by University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation trust, found no evidence that any of the patients whose files were marked DNR had been informed about the decision, nor their relatives told. The hospital’s own audit showed that in one ward, 30 per cent of cases did not involve any such conversations.

* At University Hospitals Bristol Foundation trust, there was no evidence that a DNR order placed on a patient had been discussed with the person or next of kin. A junior doctor told inspectors that they did “not tend to discuss” such decisions with families.

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Bioethics, Policy, Population October 11, 2011

India’s Kerala State to Adopt Two-Child Policy to Curb Population

Women’s rights leaders as well as Christian and Muslim organizations have criticized a new Kerala state police that restricts couples from having more than two children.

The new stipulations were passed in the Kerala Women’s Code Bill 2011 and was prepared by the Indian state’s Commission for the Rights and Welfare of Children and Women.

The move comes as India continues to witness a population boom and state governments are looking at ways to curtail the explosion.

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Bioethics, Flashpoints, News September 27, 2011

Dengue fever: CIA’s bio attack on Pak suspected

Fears are growing in Pakistan that the spread of dengue fever also known as break-bone fever may have been caused by some kind of biological experiment or deliberate release of virus by foreign elements.

Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) representatives have called on security agencies to investigate fears of deliberate spread of dengue virus in Pakistan. According to a report, the PMA members and experts have demanded in-depth investigation over mysterious spread of Dengue virus in Punjab.

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Bioethics, Development, History, Population August 25, 2011

PR Firms Get Back In The Behaviour Modification Business

PR. Two letters that can spark a volatile emotional reaction in many people. And judging from a recent article in the Guardian detailing its psychologically manipulative roots in Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, they can’t be blamed. Bernays first used public relations during World War I to sell the idea that the purpose of the war was ‘bringing democracy to all of Europe.’ The campaign was tremendously effective, which made Bernays realize that public opinion could be shifted by appealing to the unconscious. PR and other practices spearheaded by Bernays can be credited for creating the modern day consumer, one that is based not on practical needs but emotional gratification.

As Bernays put it, “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?”

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Bioethics, History, News, Sci/Tech August 23, 2011

Achtung Baby: German Women Seek Pure Blood Aryan Men In India

Nobody knows of their real origin or if they are indeed Aryans. But, regarded as long-lost members of a purebred ‘Master Race’ settled in the Himalayas, Brokpas attract curious visitors, some of who try to satisfy their fantasy of having pure Aryan babies.

In 2007, filmmaker Sanjeev Sivan released his documentary Achtung Baby: In Search of Purity on the phenomenon of German women travelling to Indian villages by the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir to get impregnated by men they believe to be racially pure Aryans. These villages are inhabited by a tribe called Brokpas, who are rumoured to be the ‘last pure specimens’ of the Aryan race. Across the world, several people still regard Aryans as the ‘Master Race’—tall, blue-eyed blondes endowed with superior intelligence and values.

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Bioethics, Economy, Population, SuperClass, Think Tanks August 18, 2011

World Bank Calls On Ghana To Check Population Growth

Mr Javed Talat, Executive Director of the World Bank on Monday called on the Ghana Government to fashion out mechanisms that would help check the ever-growing population to solve development challenges.

He said Technology was fast moving towards reductions in job creation such that unchecked population growth could become disastrous to developing countries in terms of high rates of unemployment.

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Bioethics, News, Sci/Tech August 16, 2011

Is gender selection of a fetus ethical?

In countries such as China and India, the cultural preference for boys is well-documented, and parents for years have been using ultrasound and amniocentesis — followed by abortion — to avoid giving birth to girls. In some parts of rural India, where basic health care is hardly available, local clinics have sophisticated ultrasound machines used privately — and illegally — for sex selection.

Such practices have already skewed sex ratios in these countries. In China in 2005, there were 32 million more men under 20 than women. This has cast a shadow over the young men’s prospects of marriage and raised concerns about social instability and expansion of the sex industry.

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Bioethics, News August 5, 2011

Repay student loans by selling a kidney, says British academic

Kidney donors should be paid £28,000 for their organs, says an academic who claims the move could help students pay off their university debts. In a comment published online at BMJ.com, Dr Sue Rabbitt Roff of the University of Dundee said that paying live donors would encourage more to come forward and so shorten waiting lists. Dr Roff said three people die in the UK each day because they could not get a kidney transplant.

While the UK currently has a reimbursement model in which the NHS covers donors’ costs for several weeks, Dr Roff suggests a new approach:

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Bioethics, GeoPolitics, News July 21, 2011

Regulations proposed for animal–human chimaeras

Source: Nature News UK lays out first framework to govern ethically sensitive research field. Alison Abbott The increasingly sophisticated blending of different species to create chimaeras is pushing biology into a new ethical dimension. Last year, scientists used new stem-cell technologies to create a mouse with a functioning pancreas composed entirely of rat cells. So [...]

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Bioethics, GeoPolitics, News, Population July 21, 2011

Ireland: Women ‘skimping on contraception due to recession’

Source: Population Matters Women are putting off gynaecological check-ups and skimping on contraception to  save money as the recession bites, a leading sexual health clinic has warned. More women are also self-treating sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) while  the number seeking fertility tests has fallen for the first time in a decade. Well Woman said it was concerned [...]

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