Publications

The growth of public and professional interest in “anti-aging” interventions raises an ethical problem for the medical profession with important policy implications: is human aging an appropriate target for medical intervention? At present there is nothing that medicine can prescribe to combat aging that has any scientific validation (Olshansky, Hayflick,...

Some people dispute the relative importance of issues in genetics and biotechnology for the future of bioethics, either because they think the problems are time-limited or because they give priority to issue of human rights and social justice in health care. In fact, the special historical standing of genetic issue...

Lisa Morgan arrives in the office of Dr. Karen Anderson, her obstetrician/gynecologist. Dr. Anderson, who is going over her schedule for the day, hopes that Lisa is not pregnant again. Less than 2 years ago, Dr. Anderson had performed a therapeutic abortion for Lisa, who is now 20 years old...

In ‘Ethical jurisdictions in bioethical research’, J.M. Mfutso-Bengu and T. Taylor describe a conflict between a host ethics committee in Malawi and a remote ethical committee in USA, concerning the wording of a consent form. The study in question involved the removal of the eyes of children who had died...

The use of interventions claiming to prevent, retard, or reverse aging is proliferating. Some of these interventions can seriously harm older persons and aging baby boomers who consume them. Others that are merely ineffective may divert patients from participating in beneficial regimens and also cause them economic harm. “Free market...

We report on a study of potential sources of therapeutic misconception in early phase gene transfer research, examining how investigators and their consent forms represent the prospect for direct benefit. Our analysis demonstrates that even though half of PIs said they expected direct medical benefit for their subjects, they did...

This study explored the illness experiences of adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) using Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA). Five adolescents with IDDM were asked to videotape 8 hours of their lives over a 1-month period. At the conclusion of the study, the primary investigator interviewed each adolescent and their diabetes...

On October 1, 1988, thirty-five years after co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule, Dr. James Watson launched an unprecedented experiment in American science policy. In response to a reporter’s question at a press conference, he unilaterally set aside 3 to 5 percent of the budget of the newly launched...