More and more companies are selling genetic tests directly to consumers. You don’t need a prescription. Just go online and order a test and you’ll get a cotton swab with which you scrape the inside of your cheek. You then send the cotton swab to a laboratory and await the answer: What do your genes […]
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A computer simulated human brain – that undoubtedly sounds like science fiction. But the EU flagship project, the Human Brain Project, actually has computer simulation of the brain as an objective. What will be accomplished during the ten years that the project is financed will presumably be simulations of more limited brain functions (often in […]
Continue readingAs you may have noticed, I have for some time not posted quite as often as before. That is because I’m right now compiling previous posts, turning the Ethics Blog into a book. I thought it would go quickly to make a blog book. But it takes time to choose appropriate texts and arrange them […]
Continue readingTraditional bioethics does not pay sufficient attention to the role that family relationships can play, for example, in decisions about organ donation. New opportunities in healthcare create moral problems that bioethics therefore cannot identify and manage. To identify and understand these moral problems requires a specific ethics of families, writes among others Ulrik Kihlbom in […]
Continue readingResearch and technology changes us: changes the way we live, speak and think. One area of research that will change us in the future is brain research. Here are some remarkable discoveries about some seemingly unconscious patients; discoveries that we still don’t know how to make intelligible or relate to. A young woman survived a […]
Continue readingI believe that many who call a telenurse are wondering which voice they will encounter. Will it be considerate or dismissive? Male or female? Young or old? Sympathetic or unsympathetic? I guess also the telenurse is wondering which voice he or (usually) she will encounter when answering the call. Will it be self-assertive or self-denying? […]
Continue readingScience is an advanced collective enterprise. Even the most original researcher inevitably builds on the achievements of other researchers. They deserve credit, and transparency facilitates research and makes it possible to scrutinize the original work. The art of giving due credit to other researchers is therefore part and parcel of scientific practice. It is a […]
Continue readingPhilosophy is often seen as a tradition. Each significant philosopher studied his significant predecessors, found them faulty in various respects, and embarked to correct them. Aristotle corrected Plato, Descartes corrected the scholastics, and Heidegger corrected the whole history of thought since the pre-Socratics. Philosophy appears as a long backward movement into the future, driven by close […]
Continue readingWhat is called “philosophy” is pursued today mostly by scholars who study philosophical authors and texts, and who learn to produce certain types of comments on philosophical ideas and concepts. Such study is interesting and important, and can be compared with literary scholarship. A problem that I highlighted in my latest post, however, is a […]
Continue readingLiterary scholars don’t claim that they became novelists or poets because they studied such authors and such literature. They know what they became: they became scholars who learned to produce certain kinds of commentaries on literary works. The distinction between the works they produce and the works they study is salient and most often impossible […]
Continue readingTHE ETHICS BLOG
A research blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)
We write for researchers, healthcare staff, officials, politicians, patient organisations and anyone interested in ethics.
We comment on the research ethics and bioethics debate and discuss our own research. We address issues from current debates in the research community and in the press.
MEET THE EDITOR
Pär Segerdahl is editor of the Ethics Blog and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics.