ethics
Henrietta Lacks’ family reaches undisclosed settlement with ThermoFisher, ending 70-year long battle for compensation after using her cancer cells without permission
Descendants of Henrietta Lacks announced a lawsuit in October 2021 accusing Thermo Fisher Scientific of profiting from cancer cells that ...
GLP Podcast: Loneliness causes dementia? Parkinson’s-fighting GM tomatoes; ‘Sovietizing’ science
Loneliness could drastically boost your risk of developing dementia. Genetically engineered tomatoes may be our first line of defense against ...
Resurrection of phrenology? AI’s quest to link facial features and criminality has a shady Victorian legacy
'Phrenology’ has an old-fashioned ring to it. It sounds like it belongs in a history book, filed somewhere between bloodletting ...
Ethicists argue for prioritizing safety over speed in pushing for coronavirus vaccine approvals
[W]ithin six months of SARS-CoV-2 appearing on the scene, over 140 vaccine candidates are in the pipeline and clinical trials ...
In the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, ethical concerns abound
How do we ethically test it in people? Can people be forced to get the vaccine if they don’t want it? ...
Artificial consent: Unproven AI making key decisions about patients health care without their knowledge
At a growing number of prominent hospitals and clinics around the country, clinicians are turning to AI-powered decision support tools ...
Geopolitics of the future: AI autonomous fighting robots could spark a news arms race
Abishur Prakash, geopolitical futurist for the Center for Innovating the Future, discussed the potential scenarios that could unfold in the ...
Viewpoint: Calling gene-edited crops ‘natural’ won’t dispel public skepticism. Here’s a better way to build trust in CRISPR
What determines whether a genetically modified vegetable or fruit is natural? ...
Teaching AI to think ethically
[M]athematicians have developed a model that can help businesses spot when commercial AI systems might make shady choices in the ...
The rich get safer? Developing countries likely last in line to get virus vaccine
Worldwide, about a dozen potential COVID-19 vaccines are in early stages of testing. While some could move into late-stage testing ...
Race science? Can AI ‘predict’ criminality through facial analysis?
With “80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias,” the paper, A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using ...
China demands DNA from millions of men and boys, raising questions about privacy and consent
[China’s police force has] swept across the country since late 2017 to collect enough samples to build a vast DNA ...
Ethical pros and cons of infecting healthy volunteers in quest for COVID-19 vaccine
Instead of vaccinating hundreds to thousands of people and waiting to see if they naturally catch the virus, scientists would ...
Experimental Parkinson’s treatment draws ethics scrutiny with wealthy donor selected as first patient
A secretive experiment revealed [May 12], in which neurosurgeons transplanted brain cells into a patient with Parkinson’s disease, made medical ...
From bioterror to bioerror: Who’s afraid of biohacking?
In March, amateur scientists in Sydney announced they had created a COVID-19 test kit that is simpler, faster, and cheaper ...
A right to know? Should children be told when a parent’s genetic test reveals hereditary risks?
What are the legal, professional and ethical, duties or responsibilities of researchers and clinicians in handling genetic testing and the ...
Viewpoint: Medical ethics shouldn’t stop coronavirus vaccine researchers from experimenting on healthy people
The pandemic has thrown previous moral assumptions into disarray. ... Research ethics normally prohibits exposing human subjects to significant risk ...
11 things to know about genetic engineering, including how it’s helping us fight disease
What are some interesting facts about genetic engineering, and why it is important? … Genetically engineered things are actually all ...
Is life worth living after 75? Why this medical ethicist isn’t a fan of extending the human life span
In October 2014, [physician and medical ethicist] Ezekiel Emanuel published an essay in the Atlantic called “Why I Hope to ...
When coronavirus patients don’t have time to wait: Pandemic forces ethical shift in assessing treatments
Normally, it takes about eight years to move a drug through clinical trials and approval by the US Food and ...
Podcast: Nothing about me without me—The importance of involving patients in genomic research
Kat Arney discusses why it’s so important to make sure that academic and commercial genomics research studies involve patients and ...
Plummeting prices for genetic sequencing open ‘Pandora’s box of ethical concerns’
The speed at which the price of genetic sequencing has fallen has been astonishing, from $50,000 a decade ago to roughly $600 today ...
Electricity from genetically engineered trees: It’s not as crazy as it sounds—but is it ethical?
What if trees could provide electricity to cities? .... This surrealist idyll isn’t too far-fetched, say a team of researchers ...
Experiments on living brain tissue unearth ‘ethical quandaries’
Live bits of brain look like any other piece of meat — pinkish, solid chunks of neural tissue. But unlike ...
Gene drives could revolutionize how we deal with pests—if the technology avoids the controversial fate of GMOs
In addition to research and laboratory ethics, gene drive proponents need to focus on public perception ...
Brain organoids becoming ‘more human’, forcing researchers to grapple with ethical concerns
Though no bigger than a pea, organoids hold enormous promise for improving our understanding of the brain: They can replicate ...
Podcast: The phrase ‘Who’s Your (Grand) Daddy’ has shocking relevance to Jack Nunn, as the Australian geneticist learns of his surprising link to Britain’s most notorious ‘sperminator’
Consumer genetic tests are becoming widespread - but what happens when an innocent investigation reveals dark family secrets? ...