The Bioethics Weekly

This Week — Managing Director and Research Scholar of the Center, Michael Sleasman, PhD, offers the second of a three part podcast of a workshop, entitled “Thinking through Technology,” that he led at the 2008 Christian Medical and Dental Associations National Conference. In this Second part of the workshop he explores the contributions to bioethics from philosophy of technology.

Podcast

Quote of the Week —

"Assisted suicide is ethically wrong because it denies the presence of human dignity, the concept that underpins human rights legislation. Being dependent on others does not remove dignity. We do not think of a baby as having less dignity than an adult, despite he/she being totally dependent on his/her parents. Similarly, a person with a terminal or chronic illness has no less dignity than anyone, but society needs to show this. "

—Gordon Macdonald, Public Policy Officer for Care Not Killing Scotland, in "The unnecessary dangers of assisted suicide," Scotsman, July 29, 2008.

Happenings

Stem Cells Europe
September 1-3, 2008
Amsterdam

Bioethics of Science and Technologies: Problems and Decisions
October 9-10, 2008
Kyiv, Ukraine
Email: Svitlana Pustovit / Leonid Mazur

UNESCO Ethics Teacher Training Course
November 17-21, 2008
Minsk, Belarus

International Conference on Human Rights and Biomedicine
December 10-12, 2008
Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Stem Cells World Congress
January 20-22, 2009
Palm Springs, USA

Drug Discovery Latin America
February 26-27, 2009
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Nanotechnology for the Healthcare System of the 21st Century
March 4-6, 2009
Berlin, Germany

Bioethics Committees in Hospitals
May 17-20, 2008
Zefat, Israel

News Highlights

Consent issues restrict stem-cell use
Stanford University is to tell its researchers that around one-quarter of the human embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for US government funding are now off-limits because of ethics concerns. (Nature News)

Humanity on the edge of longevity leap: futurist
Genetic science, stem-cell research and extreme caloric restriction are all part of a burgeoning “immortality industry” that could soon point the way to a fountain of youth with the potential to stretch the human life span to 125 or 150 years, says a sociologist and consultant on future studies. (Canada.com)

Monday, July 28, 2008

U.S. AIDS policies neglect blacks, report says
U.S. policies and cash may be leading the fight against AIDS globally, but they have neglected the epidemic among black Americans, the Black AIDS Institute said in a report released on Tuesday. (MSNBC)

India is becoming the hub of clinical trials
Declining enrollment in USA and West European countries has led the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to turn towards India and other Asian countries to conduct clinical trials for faster launch of drugs in the market. (MeriNews)

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Legalizing organ trade in Singapore
There is a raging debate in Singapore today: Should the government legalize the organ trade? Should Singapore endorse transplant tourism? The debate began last month when two young Indonesians were jailed for trying to sell their kidneys to a wealthy businessman in Singapore. The Human Organ Transplant Act of Singapore prohibits the supply of any organ or blood for monetary transaction. (UPI Asia)

Op-Ed: My body, my capital?
Long life is our desire, eternal youth our supposed right, and the myth of the body without origin or limits our new religion. That might be why governments are so widely seen to have a positive duty to promote stem cell research and other forms of medical progress. Biotechnology industries flourish, with state sanction and support, because they add extra value to the body, the object of supreme worth to us. (Daily Times)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Egg shortage hits stem cell studies
Facing a human egg shortage they say is preventing medical breakthroughs, scientists and biotech entrepreneurs are pushing the country’s top funders of stem cell research to rethink rules that prohibit paying women for eggs. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Workers’ Religious Freedom vs. Patients’ Rights
A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients’ rights. (Washington Post)

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Motor Neurons in ALS Patients
Scientists have turned skin cells from patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease into motor neurons that are genetically identical to the patients’ own neurons. (HealthDay)

IVF babies at increased risk of death at birth, study finds
Babies conceived through IVF are much more likely to die at birth than those conceived naturally, the results of a new study show. (Telegraph)

Friday, August 1, 2008

Each week the top news stories, as determined by the staff at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity are sent out via email.

[Note: News stories, Quote of the Week, and events do not represent the Center's views. For additional commentary on many of the issues they raise, please see the CBHD web site at www.cbhd.org.]

Please visit http://www.bioethics.com for daily posts on bioethics news and issues.

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