As a reminder of how diversified the collection and use of biological samples is, I recommend a paper by Takako Tsujimura-Ito, Yusuke Inoue (currently a guest researcher at CRB), and Ken-ichi Yoshida: “Organ retention and communication of research use following medico-legal autopsy: a pilot survey of university forensic medicine departments in Japan” Departments of forensic […]
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We must enhance the human; or else humanity will come to an end. Thus dramatically one could summarize the bioethicist Julian Savulescu’s TEDx-talk in Barcelona in July. The talk lasts fifteen minutes; you can watch and listen to it yourself: The Need for Moral Enhancement. The idea is that we urgently need medicine and technology […]
Continue readingReality is on the move, and so are we. Therefore, we are continuously challenged to characterize it, and us, anew. What is it like today? What have we become? I believe that Nietzsche made such a renewed characterization of reality, or of what we became in the nineteenth century, when he said: God is dead. […]
Continue readingIt is comprehensible that a patient who agrees to participate in a clinical trial expects to get access to a new effective therapy that will restore health. It is comprehensible that it is difficult to convey objective, dispassionate information that such an expectation is unrealistic, given randomization and other features of clinical trials. Participation in […]
Continue readingThere are things that an educated human is supposed to know about the world. Like that the Earth is spherical and that it revolves around the sun. But there are things we are supposed to know also about ourselves. Most prominently, we are supposed to know that we are animals, one of the primate species. […]
Continue readingThe interactive conference, HandsOn: Biobanks, organized for the first time in Uppsala last year, attracted participants from 27 countries. The “movie version” of the event can be viewed on BBMRI.se. This stimulating interactive concept will be repeated on 21-22 November 2013, in The Hague. HandsOn: Biobanks focuses this year on the interaction between disciplines, and […]
Continue readingIn 2001 I travelled to Atlanta, where Sue Savage-Rumbaugh then worked with the language-competent bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha. A question I travelled with concerned the linguistic tests that I had seen in a TV-documentary, Kanzi, an ape of genius. In these tests, the ape responds to requests in spoken English, uttered by an experimenter who […]
Continue readingIntellectual life overflows with regulated forms of discourse about all kinds of urgent matters. Sometimes they are called schools of thought; sometimes theories; sometimes ideologies or positions. Philosophy could be viewed as the originator of the most prestigious and fundamental discourses about life, like idealism materialism pragmatism existentialism structuralism post-structuralism. Although this to some extent is historically correct, such […]
Continue readingFor many years, balancing individual human rights against social benefits has been the standard theme for public health ethics. Here I would like to update you on a recent discussion in Japan. Last month a new law was introduced in Japan. Originally the enactment was planned later, but it was speeded up because of the […]
Continue readingReproductive technology and surrogacy often is a cross-border practice that raises several ethical issues concerning the rights not only of adult participants but also of the children involved. Do the children have a right to know about their genetic parents and do they have a right to be recognized by the countries of their contractual […]
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.