bioethics
TagBaylis Wins Molson Prize
Françoise Baylis (Dalhousie University, emerita) has been named one of the 2023 winners of the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts. (more…)
Are Philosophy’s Glory Days in Bioethics Over? (guest post)
How has philosophy’s role in cognate disciplines been changing? We could ask this question about philosophy and political theory, or cognitive science, or business ethics, or theoretical physics, and so on. In the following guest post, the focus is on philosophy and bioethics. (more…)
Philosophers On Access to Medicine
Three philosophers discuss some of the moral and political questions involved in providing access to medicine and medical care in this edition of Philosophers On. (more…)
Philosophers, Epidemiologists & Others Call for Human Challenge Trials for COVID-19 Vaccine
125 experts in various fields have signed a letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, calling for the U.S. government “to undertake immediate preparations for human challenge trials” for a vaccine for COVID-19. (more…)
Philosophy & Public Policy: Lessons from COVID-19 (guest post by James Wilson)
“Ethical advice will not make a difference to practice, unless it is received by the right people at the right time.” (more…)
The Role of Philosophy & Philosophers In The Coronavirus Pandemic (guest post)
In a previous post, I asked for suggestions from readers for topics related to the pandemic to post about and discuss here. One suggestion, from Jonathan Fuller (Pittsburgh), was the role of philosophy and philosophers during the pandemic. In the following guest post*, Alex Broadbent, Dean of Faculty of the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of Instit..
Bioethicists and Others Call for Action from U.S. Federal Government on COVID-19
“We are a group of bioethicists and health care leaders, familiar with the ethical challenges that arise in pandemics. We write to encourage actions on the part of the federal government that will enhance the public’s health, protect the health of individuals, especially the vulnerable, and preserve the nation’s vitality.” (more…)
Quebec Government Deplatforms Daniel Weinstock (updated)
Daniel Weinstock, a philosopher on the Faculty of Law at McGill University and director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, was disinvited by the Quebec government from speaking at a meeting about reforming the mandatory ethics and religious culture course taught in the province’s schools. (more…)
Philosopher Appointed to Federal Advisory Committee on Biosecurity
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) is a federal advisory committee that “addresses issues related to biosecurity and dual use research at the request of the United States Government.” (more…)
New Site for Experimental Philosophical Bioethics
BioXphi aims to be an online hub for experimental philosophical bioethics. (more…)
Daniel Callahan (1930-2019)
Daniel Callahan, co-founder and longtime director of the Hastings Center, the first-ever bioethics research institute, has died. (more…)
New $10,000 Prize and Lectureship in Bioethics
There’s a new prize and lecture that “recognizes junior and mid-career scholars who have made important theoretical contributions to the field of bioethics.”
Bioethicists’ Letter on the “Ethically Abhorrent” Treatment of Children at the U.S. Border
Over 800 bioethicists have signed a letter calling for the United States government to remedy its failures to assure the children it is detaining at its border are in safe and sanitary conditions. (more…)
Wenner named Greenwall Faculty Scholar
Danielle Wenner, assistant professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, has received a $200,000 award from the Greenwall Foundation to support her work at the intersection of political philosophy, biomedical ethics, and research ethics.
Berman Institute Receives $15 Million Donation
The Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has received a $15 million donation to “to support the education and training of future leaders in the field of bioethics” and create the Ruth R. Faden Endowment for Education in Bioethics.
Philosophers Awarded $1 Million Prizes for Work in Bioethics and History of Science
Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute), Ezekiel Emanuel (University of Pennsylvania), Jonathan Glover (Kings College London), Evelyn Fox Keller (MIT), Simon Schaffer (Cambridge), and Mary Warnock (Oxford) are each winners of the 2018 Dan David Prizes, an international award endowed by the Dan David Foundation.
Philosophers Write In Support of Compensating Plasma Donors
A group of philosophers and economists have published an open letter to Expert Panel on Immune Globulin Product Supply and Related Impacts in Canada opposing legislation that would make it illegal to pay people for blood plasma donations. (more…)
A Story about Death, Medicine, Race, and Philosophers
A 13-year old African-American girl goes to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. What ends up happening is heartbreaking, infuriating, surprising—and, in part, a result of the work of philosophers and bioethicists. (more…)
Nearly $1 Million To Study Ethics of Gene Editing
The Hastings Center, an independent, interdisciplinary bioethics research institute in upstate New York, was recently awarded nearly $1 million from the John Templeton Foundation for a three-year project to study the ethical and social implications of gene editing methods (like Crispr-Cas9) on germline cells (changes to which would be passed down to future generatio..
Students On “Philosophers On Drug Prices”
At the end of September, Daily Nous published an installment in the “Philosophers On” series on drug prices, spurred by the sudden increase, from $13.50 to $750.00 per pill, in the price of Daraprim (pyrimethamine).
Not long after that, I was contacted by Spencer Hey, currently a faculty member at the Harvard Center for Bioethics and a research fellow in the Depa..
Bioethics Groups Win $3.6m NIH Grant on Pregnancy and HIV/AIDS
Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Center for Bioethics, and the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Department of Bioethics and Humanities have won a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project on ethi..
Journal Editor Resists University “Vetting” of Content
A Northwestern University professor who edits a bioethics magazine has shelved the publication over a dispute with administrators, who demand that public relations staff approve content. Katie Watson, a professor in the university’s Medical Humanities and Bioethics program who edits the journal Atrium, said the demand followed recent controversy over the school’s ce..
Philosophy’s Impact (updated)
The applied philosophy literature is full of insights about practical problems. But in our survey of the literature we find essentially no accounts of how a philosopher is supposed to ensure that these insights have an impact. It’s a bias rooted in the discipline: one has exhausted one’s intellectual task and professional obligation when one deposits a peer-reviewed..
Bioethicist Live-Tweets Her Son’s Sex-Ed Class (updated)
Alice Dreger, a professor in medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern, sat in on her son’s sex-ed class at East Lansing High School and live-tweeted commentary about it to the world. The tweets were simultaneously disturbing and hilarious.
The kid has invited me to his health class on sex ed to see how bad it is, so I’m going. But hands over my mouth m..
Is Bio-Medical Ethics Failing?
What medical ethics needs is more and better philosophy—and a return to the adventurousness and originality of its pioneering days. There have been successes—euthanasia and better treatment of animals to mention just two. But the field has in many ways dried up or become dominated by moralists bent on protecting privacy and confidentiality at great cost and ‘getting..
Bioethicists on Ebola
We are now experiencing the tragic consequences of failing to appreciate the need to invest more resources, expertise and support in developing countries, including those where the Ebola outbreak is happening. Such investments would have allowed for health systems in those parts of the world to be better equipped to respond to and minimize the unfolding crisis. For ..
One of These Is Actually Happening
– Not happening. Yet.
Transcendence is the recently released sci-fi movie the plot of which involves uploading the mind of a scientist (played by Johnny Depp) to a computer system. You can watch the trailer here, and then you can head over to OUP Blog and watch a few brief videos of Nick Bostrom (Oxford) discussing the movie and the plausibility of uploading, whole ..
The Kinds of Beings We Are: Curing Deafness Edition
“We’re just trying to tweak the mammalian system a little bit to do what a lot of other species do naturally.” Those are the words of Lloyd Klickstein of Novartis, the Swiss drug company collaborating with scientists at the University of Kansas Medical Center who will soon begin injecting deaf study subjects with a “harmless virus containing a gene that should trigg..