Bioethics Category
Vaccinate the World! Yes okay, thank you.
Posted on December 10, 2021
Hello Ethic Nutters, Here is a news clip I would like to comment on. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiziwzEupbY As the pandemic now enters a new phase with the Omicron variant, many are still asking the question: Why can developed nations vaccinate their citizens with a third dose, when many in the developing have not received their first […]
A few thoughts on the novel corona virus pandemic
Posted on November 15, 2020
At the moment the globe is still wrestling with the novel coronavirus. There is now new found hope that the promise of a few vaccines that show efficacy in early analysis will come to fruition and life can return to a certain level of normalcy. Early on numerous Bioethicists were being consulted on the matter […]
CRISPR Founders Win Nobel Prize
Posted on October 10, 2020
Hi Ethic Nutters, As you may already know, Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier have won the Nobel Prize for their work discovering and developing the method of CRISPR-Cas9. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nobel-prize-chemistry-2020-1.5753279 Congratulations! Andrew
Throwing a person in front of a Trolley: When it’s Right and Why – An Armchair Ethics Post
Posted on April 22, 2020
Would you kill one person to save a group? Sounds like the worst choice anyone would ever have to make. How can you weigh one person’s life against another or multiple lives? Are all lives weighted in value equally? Are some people more worth saving than others, worth more than another person’s life? A commonly […]
Will China’s Moral Difference Propel it Ahead of the West
Posted on November 2, 2019
Happy post-Halloween weekend Ethic Nutter’s. Today I saw an interesting article on SingularityHub about China’s use of CRISPR which I found compelled to write about. SingularityHub is a futurist source of news on issues shaping the future. In the article “Inside China’s Play to Become the World’s CRISPR Superpower” by Marc Prosser he reviews China’s […]
A Very Short Brief on the Benefits of Palliative Care
Posted on August 9, 2019
The Benefits of Palliative Care: Beyond relief from suffering *** This brief addresses the following question: What benefits are there from palliative care beyond the usual relief from pain and suffering? *** The benefits of palliative care beyond that of relieving pain and suffering are starting to come to light. Not only is palliative care […]
Subject-of-a-life
Posted on June 19, 2019
This paper summarizes Tom Regan’s theory of “subject-of-a-life” then through critical analysis of his main criteria examines how reasonable each criterion is in determining a “subject-of-a-life”. Regan’s theory is then tested on a specific ethical dilemma to see how applicable it is to everyday situations. Tom Regan formulates an environmental ethics for animals using a […]
Genetic Testing: No going back but not there yet
Posted on April 27, 2019
Hello Ethic Nutters, Recently in the news are reports of 23andMe not being as great as some people expect. See news story: Don’t Count on 23andMe Study Warns What I think the lesson here is, is that we shouldn’t rely on simple over-the-counter advice at any stage of the decision-making process. Which is what 23andMe essentially […]
Conflict of Autonomy
Posted on February 2, 2019
A 38-year-old father does not want his 18-year-old daughter to have a test done for Huntington’s disease on her fetus. His reason for this is that if the test comes back positive, he will also know that he has Huntington’s which he has carefully thought about in the past and decided he did not want […]
Researcher in China builds first engineered human
Posted on November 30, 2018
In a stunning first in genetic engineering, a Chinese researcher has engineered a human. This incredible achievement is one of a number of firsts coming from China recently in the area of genetic engineering. But is all of this at a cost to our morals? Can we allow this path to continue in one region […]
Andrew Milroy 