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AT THE CENTRE
Centre offers two new subjects to first year undergraduate students
Centre sponsors Ethics Officer po sition at WHO Human Genetics Programme
ARTICLES Human cloning and ‘posthuman’ society Russell Blackford ABSTRACT Since early 1997, when the creation of Dolly the sheep by somatic cell nuclear transfer was announced in Nature, numerous government reports, essays, articles and books have considered the ethical problems and policy issues surrounding human reproductive cloning. In this article, I consider what response a modern liberal society should give to the prospect of human cloning, if it became safe and practical. Some opponents of human cloning have argued that permitting it would place us on a slippery slope to a repugnant future society, comparable to that portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World. I conclude that, leaving aside concerns about safety, none of the psychological or social considerations discussed in this article provides an adequate policy justification for invoking the state's coercive powers to prevent human cloning. Should older and postmenopausal women have access to assisted reproductive technology? Imogen Goold ABSTRACT In vitro fertilisation and other assisted reproductive technologies (ART) now enable many women to have children, who would otherwise have remaine d childless. The most obvious application for these technologies is to help physically infertile, but otherwise healthy young women to have children. However, increasingly, other groups are seeking access to ART to conceive, raising ethical questions about who should be allowed to use these technologies to bear children. In particular, the question of access to ART by lesbian couples and single women has roused considerable ethical, legal and public debate.
This paper examines the perhaps less often considered issue of older and postmenopausal women, who are infertile due to age, using ART to conceive. A range of objections have been made to allowing these women access to ART, including concerns about their ability to care for the child, the risk of birth defects and the ‘unnaturalness’ of extending childbearing capacity beyond the menopause. This paper examines these objections and provides some responses. WHISTLE-BLOWING DISCUSSION Coherence and healthcare whistle-blowing: A response to Parker ABSTRACT None provided
Whistle-blowing in the medical curriculum: A response to Faunce ABSTRACT We agree with Faunce’s proposal that academic legitimacy is important in ensuring that whistle-blowing is included in medical curricula. We disagree, however, with the assertion that this is best achieved by means of an over-arching theoretical foundation for health care whistle -blowing of the kind suggested by Faunce. We propose that systematic theoretical justification is neither the sole nor the main determinant of academic legitimacy when it comes to matters for inclusion in medical school curricula, and outline an alternative view, together with a practical example of a healthcare whistle-blowing topic. The ethical status of whistle-blowers Grant Gillet ETHICS COMMITTEE SUPPLEMENT JOTTINGS
Recalled arthritis drug facilities underestimated
Call for standards to guide microbicide research in African countries
Brazil moves to break patents on foreign AIDS drugs
Indian clinical trial accused of being unethical
Nevirapine safety fears may lead to backlash
ETHICS COMMITTEE REFLECTION Payments to research subjects Martin Wilkinson BOOK REVIEW
Each year, physicians in the United States write more than threebillion prescriptions, or about twelve prescriptions per American.1 In2009 alone, the United States spent some $300 billion on prescriptiondrugs.2 Similarly, the medical device market accounts for around $200billion in annual sales.3 With so much money at stake, it should comeas no surprise that drug and device companies invest massi
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