Philosophy & Ethics

What Ancient Greeks Thought About The Three-Person Baby Debate

The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius by Peter Paul Rubens  By Helen King, The Open University The science and morality of creating a life with DNA from three different individuals is hot news. The UK parliament has voted in favor of allowing trials of ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 3 2015 - 5:01pm

Social Freezing: The Ethical And Medical Issues Of Egg Cryopreservation

Apple and Facebook have an odd perquisite for their employees- they will pay for their employees to place oocytes in frozen storage — social freezing, also known as cryopreservation and egg freezing. Companies may have a mercenary desire to do so, even if ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 6 2015 - 9:30am

When The Clintons’ Doctor Embraces Pseudoscience

Pudgy and recovering from heart surgery, Bill Clinton needed someone to optimize his health. Hillary Clinton knew just the man for the job, and in 2005 introduced him to Dr. Mark Hyman, whose expertise they credit for Mr. Clinton’s current svelte physique ...

Article - Alan Levinovitz - Feb 6 2015 - 10:00am

Is Immolation A Valid Punishment Under Islamic Law?

There is confusion about whether immolation is permissible under Islamic law. EPA By Jon Hoover, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Arts a University of Nottingham The killing of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by Islamic State has been e ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 6 2015 - 4:32pm

Is Using Big Data To Detect Disease Outbreaks Ethical?

Personal information taken from social media, blogs, page views and so on are used to detect disease outbreaks, however, does this violate our privacy and trust if people do not consent to it? ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 10 2015 - 9:00am

We Need Women On Boards For Many Reasons, But Ethics Isn't One

There are many good reasons for increasing gender diversity on boards: better decisions, better performance, and better representation of the consumer base. But the idea, put forward in a variety of research over the past twenty years or so, that women on ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 19 2015 - 7:19pm

Will Brain Images And Thoughts Be Protected Under The 4th And 5th Amendments?

Credit: Jon Olav Eikenes, CC-BY-SA By: Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, Inside Science (Inside Science)- Brain imaging can already pull bits of information from the minds of willing volunteers in laboratories. What happens when police or lawyers want to use it to ...

Article - Inside Science - Feb 25 2015 - 10:07am

Fixing Outdated Guidelines For Human Vaccine Trials

A volunteer receives a trial Ebola vaccine at the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine in Oxford, southern England January 16, 2015. Eddie Keogh/Reuters Recently, Phase II and III trials of two vaccines for Ebola started in West Africa. T ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 1 2015 - 11:04am

Do You Want To Donate Your Genetic Information After Death?

After they die, people are happy to donate their hearts, their eyes, even whole skeletons, without knowing anything at all about what will happen to them. What about genetic information?  Under current law, your genetic information is not inherited by defa ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 2 2015 - 12:56pm

War On Doping And The Hypocritical Treatment Of Lance Armstrong

No doubt Lance Armstrong is still digesting the news that he has to repay $10 million (£6.4m) to previous sponsors following a ruling by an arbitration panel a few weeks ago. This is on top of the lifetime ban from all sporting competitions that he was gi ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 5 2015 - 1:30am