PJW Note: This post originally appeared on October 28, 2013. Yet, as a recent Op-ed in The New York Times, “Pregnant, and No Civil Rights,” clearly demonstrates, the problems Reiheld addresses have only gotten worse. With over 2,000 hits in the past three days, … Continue reading
PJW Note: This post originally appeared on October 28, 2013. Yet, as a recent Op-ed in The New York Times, “Pregnant, and No Civil Rights,” clearly demonstrates, the problems Reiheld addresses have only gotten worse. With over 2,000 hits in the past three days, … Continue reading
By Françoise Baylis (Dalhousie University) In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) lifted the experimental designation on human egg freezing. At this time, it was careful to indicate that freezing technology should not to be used for elective … Continue reading
In what’s being hailed as a huge step in fertility and reproduction science, doctors in Sweden say a woman has given birth to a baby boy less than two years after she received viagra price canada This is in fact … Continue reading
By Katy Fulfer and Angel Petropanagos At the recent FABWorld Congress in Mexico City, a panel on Ethics of Uterine Transplantation outlined three ethical challenges. Ariel Lefkowitz and Jacques Balayla, authors of the Montreal Criteria for Ethical Feasibility of Uterine … Continue reading
In the last week, the UK government has launched a public consultation on regulating a proposed new reproductive technology, variously known as mitochondrial replacement/transfer/donation. At about the same time, it was announced that the US Food and Drug Administration was … Continue reading
Frank Bruni in the New York Times on the Texas Rangers baseball player Rafael Palmiero and NASCAR racer Mark Martin are some of the professional athletes who endorse this get viagra prescription magic blue pill. Some levitra best prices of … Continue reading
“According to the report card, the results for reproductive health in the USA are neither encouraging nor consistent across the country. It offers effective cure for sexual weakness pills viagra canada and debilities caused due to excessive hand practice. You … Continue reading
This is a guest post by Nathan Emmerich. Nathan Emmerich is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast where he has been working on Bioethical Expertise. He took his PhD from Queen’s and this was recently published as a book entitled ‘Medical Ethics Education.’
On Thursday the 21st of November the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland (NI) gave its judgement in a case between the Attorney General for NI, John Larkin, and the Senior Coroner for Northern Ireland. The case concerned whether the Attourney General could compel the coroner to convene an inquest into a still-birth. The coroner had declined to do so, arguing that it did not fall within the remit of his office. Briefly, as the role of the coroner is to investigate deaths there had to be an individual who was, legally speaking, alive and had subsequently died. Thus coroners in NI and, for that matter, the UK have not historically held inquests into still-births. A lower court had previously upheld the position of the coroner and that judgement alluded to some of the concerns I raise here.
The question of when life and, in particular, human life begins and ends has been persistent and contentious in biology, philosophy, theology and law. In bioethical thought there are a number of different accounts where it is common to distinguish between the start of life and the point at which a human organism attracts moral importance. Furthermore we might think that the human organism has different moral weights depending on the state of its development or, for that matter, demise. Such consdierations lead in a variety of directions, not least to the provocative argument that neonates might not meet the requirements for ‘personhood’ and therefore should not be considered (full) members of the moral community. It is not easy to resolve these ethical conundra and they will continue to trouble bioethical scholarship for the foreseeable future. However, the law cannot afford the luxury of uncertainty. Whilst we might recognise some degree of complexity and attempt to mediate between competing demands, ultimately the law has to adopt a position on when the ‘human organism’ becomes an individual, recognised by law and, therefore, a (legal) person.
Continue readingOriginally posted on the The Doctor’s Tablet The use of gestational surrogates in India is a booming business, but is it ethical? This growing practice involves individuals and couples from countries in Western Europe, North America, Israel, Japan and elsewhere … Continue reading
This commentary was initially posted on August 16, 2013 on the Impact Ethics blog and is reposted here with permission of the authors. Visit impactethics.ca
Stephen Wilkinson and Eve Garrard respond to Alana Cattapan’s blog post calling for the continuing prohibition on embryo sex selection.
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Alana Cattapan raises many important questions about our objections to the current legal prohibition on embryo sex selection within IVF (not sex-selective abortion), in the UK and other relevantly similar countries. We are grateful for this opportunity to comment.
Law and Morality: Our report, Eugenics and the Ethics of Selective reproduction, isn’t about the ethics of IVF sex selection per se, but about the defensibility of a legal prohibition on IVF sex selection. We hold that, while some instances of sex selection are morally problematic, the case in favour of a ban is insufficiently strong. Using the powers of the state to impose legal restrictions on people’s reproductive behaviour is a serious, and potentially dangerous, business and something to be done cautiously and only for compelling reasons. Sometimes there are such reasons – we don’t support an entirely laissez-faire position – but, in the case of sex selection, a conclusive case hasn’t been made. We don’t claim that sex selection is desirable, or even that most cases of it are morally acceptable. Our conclusion is just that the case for legal prohibition is insufficiently strong to overturn the presumption of reproductive freedom.
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