Gene transfer often has multiple and unpredictable effects on cells. The high hope of genetic medicine for 30 years has been to develop a way of using recombinant DNA techniques to treat patients through the genes involved in their diseases. As Richard Roblin, scientific director of the Council on Bioethics of the President of the … Read more

Family-based research is essential to understanding the genetic and environmental etiology of human disease. The success of family-based research often depends on investigators’ ability to identify, recruit, and achieve a high participation rate among eligible family members. However, recruitment of family members raises ethical concerns due to the tension between protecting participants’ privacy and promoting … Read more

The critique of vulnerability offered by Levine et al. (2004) affirms recent discussions about the disutility of this imputed characteristic of individuals and groups for protecting research subjects. Being “too broad,” vulnerability stereotypes whole categories of individuals, and everyone might be considered vulnerable. Being “too narrow,” vulnerability’s focus on group characteristics diverts attention from features … Read more

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, Carnes, 2002). But biogerontologists are … Read more

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 s in bioethics reflects four … Read more

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 and unmarried. The doctor’s concerns … Read more

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 of malaria in order to … Read more

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 regulation” does not seem to … Read more