Earlier this week the exciting news was released that the Human Brain Project is one of the two Flagship Initiatives launched by the European Commission. The project is an international collaboration between more than 80 research institutions. It will create computer models of the human brain to help us better understand the brain and its diseases. It […]
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Doping is often discussed as the individual athlete’s own decision. The athlete wants to win and strategically chooses to take drugs to reach the goal. When the cyclist Lance Armstrong recently confessed that he used performance enhancing drugs while he won Tour de France seven times, he personally took responsibility for his actions and presented […]
Continue readingIs ethics universally valid or can we act differently as moral individuals than as ethical representatives of public institutions? I just read a well-argued article in Science Policy Forum, discussing whether patients should be paid for their tissue. As their point of departure, the authors cite the (by now) famous case of Henrietta Lacks. Contrary to […]
Continue readingYesterday I read Lars Hertzberg’s thoughtful blog, Language is things we do. His latest post drew my attention to a militant humanist, Raymond Tallis (who resembles another militant humanist, Roger Scruton). Tallis published Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. He summarizes his book in this presentation on YouTube. Tallis gesticulates violently. As […]
Continue readingOne of the issues preceding the Swedish Data Inspection Board’s decision to stop the population-based biobank LifeGene concerned participation of minors. LifeGene had planned to collect samples from half a million Swedes, including children. A regional ethical review board, however, decided against collecting data from children. Only data collection from adults was approved of. LifeGene […]
Continue readingEthical questions about health care and medical research often require empirical input, to make arguments valid for real conditions. Many of the future issues that engage us at CRB need empirical basis in so called Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE). We are therefore recruiting a researcher with a doctoral degree in health economics and documented skills […]
Continue readingYesterday, I read a thought-provoking article about biosecurity. It suggested novel ways of thinking about infectious diseases. According to traditional thinking, infectious diseases strike us from outside. Therefore, we protect us from such external threats by building more effective borders. We secure pure healthy spaces and protect these spaces from impure, diseased ones. The alternative […]
Continue readingIt saddens me to have to report that Panbanisha, the bonobo who understood more about humans than any other nonhuman – and more than most humans – died November 6, 2012, from respiratory illness. Meeting her made it obvious to me that the world is more-than-human and that we have to rethink the inherited cosmology. Pär […]
Continue readingWe tend to view logical laws and ethical principles as foundational: as more basic than ordinary discourse, and “making possible” logical and ethical reasoning. They set us on the right intellectual path, so to speak, on the most fundamental level. I want to suggest another possibility: logical laws and ethical principles are derived from ordinary […]
Continue readingThe Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics (CRB) is currently recruiting two researchers. We are looking for creative persons who like multi-disciplinary collaboration and are fluent in English. 1. Researcher in health economics (UFV-PA 2012/2684): We are looking for a person with a doctoral degree in health economics with documented skills in Discrete Choice Experiments. […]
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.