When surgery is performed on pregnant women for the sake of the fetus (MFS or maternal fetal surgery). it is often discussed in terms of the fetus alone. This usage exemplifies what philosophers call the fallacy of abstraction: considering a concept as if it were separable from another concept whose meaning is essentially related to … Read more

The use of aggregated quality of life estimates in the formation of public policy and practice guidelines raises concerns about the moral relevance of variability in values in preferences for health care. This variability may reflect unique and deeply held beliefs that may be lost when averaged with the preferences of other individuals. Feminist moral … Read more

Researchers have announced “the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children.”* Specifically, the researchers transplanted ooplasm from donor eggs into the eggs of women whose infertility was due to ooplasmic defects. One side effect of those transplants was the transfer of mitochondria, introducing new mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) into the eggs. … Read more

OBJECTIVE: To review the advances in the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and revisit the medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding infertility management in HIV-infected couples. DESIGN: Analytic review. RESULTS(S): HIV infection continues to be a serious public health and reproductive issue. However, present policies which allow for the categorical exclusion of HIV-infected … Read more

BACKGROUND: Important clinical, social, and ethical questions are associated with the evaluation and use of surgical approaches aimed at correcting fetal anatomic abnormalities. In particular, the expansion of maternal-fetal surgery to ameliorate nonlethal fetal conditions has intensified the need to address issues about the adequacy of technology assessment and the safety of those who undergo … Read more

As science learns more about how the brain works, and fails to work, the possibility for developing “cognition enhancers” becomes more plausible. And the demand for drugs that can help us think faster, remember more, and focus more keenly has already been demonstrated by the market success of drugs like Ritalin, which tames the attention … Read more

The Program and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of human genome research is a branch of the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NCHGR is responsible, in conjunction with the Office of Health and Environment at the Department of Energy (DOE), for administration and … Read more

The articles in this issue illuminate psychosocial issues raised by the development and delivery of new medical technologies. Five kinds of questions surface repeatedly: questions about a technology’s purpose(s), the value judgments it presumes, the locus of its control, the external forces that drive it, and its long-term social risks. These questions take the discussion … Read more

Almost every form of cancer in humans has been reported to aggregate in families. These familial clusters can be due to inheritance of a mutated cancer-susceptibility gene, though other explanations include chance association and shared exposures to environmental carcinogens. In recent years, the chromosomal locations of some cancer-predisposing genes have been mapped by the new … Read more