The Center for the Study of Bioethics and The Hastings Center are pleased to announce that they will be jointly hosting the international conference “Enhancing Understanding of Enhancement.” The conference will be held at the Center for the Study of Bioethics in Belgrade on October 27-28, 2015. It will explore various issues pertaining to enhancement, including our understanding of enhancement, genetically engineered enhancement, cognitive enhancement, moral enhancement, and bio-enhancement in …

By Rose Bowen and Michael Lausberg
In cases of sexual assault, the issue of consent is of central concern. Establishing that consent was freely and affirmatively given is not always easy. A sexual assault case in Iowa highlighted one such dimension of this complicated issue. Henry Rayhons was accused of sexually assaulting his wife, Donna Lou Rayhons. Henry insisted that the sexual contact was consensual, but the prosecuting attorneys claimed that …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Brittany Maynard, a twenty nine-year-old woman diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, opted to end her life last year; in doing so, she became the new face of the assisted suicide movement. Following her diagnosis, Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon so that she would be able to take advantage of Oregon’s Death with Dignity legislation. Prior to her death, Maynard recorded a video urging California …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Surgeons in South Africa announced this month that a 21-year-old penis transplant recipient had achieved full urinary and reproductive functionality. The surgery was performed in December 2014; doctors had anticipated that it would take two years for the patient to achieve this level of functionality. Professor Frank Graewe, a member of the surgical team and the head of plastic reconstructive surgery at Stellenbosch University, said that this procedure …

By Richard Balagtas
On Tuesday, March 10th, France’s parliament began debating a bill that would allow “doctors to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death comes.” This bill was introduced amidst a heated national debate concerning the legalization of euthanasia. The bill itself avoids the use of terms such as euthanasia, assisted suicide, and lethal injections, but only barely. The bill, if passed, would allow doctors to sedate patients who are …

By Dr. Charles Debrovner
Most people spend much of their adult lives trying not to have children. During the past fifty years, the ability to make reproductive decisions has expanded significantly to include a wide variety of family planning options. However, when we do want to have children, and conceiving or carrying a pregnancy proves difficult or impossible, we become frustrated, angry, and depressed. This is because we have grown up …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Last August, Thailand gave preliminary approval to a draft law that would make commercial surrogacy a crime; parliament voted 160 to 2 to pass the measure on February 19.
The law bans foreigners from seeking surrogacy services in Thailand, a country that has long been a popular destination for first-world couples seeking affordable surrogates. The country’s previously unrestricted surrogacy market resulted in what the media dubbed a “rent-a-womb” industry, …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is very common; the Center for Disease Control estimates that nearly all sexually active males and females will contract it at some point in their lifetimes. HPV can cause sexually transmitted diseases such as genital warts, and cervical, vulvar, and vaginal cancers. In 2011, more than 12,000 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer, and more than 4,000 perished from it that year.
But HPV …

By Caroline Song
Lawmakers in Vermont recently filed a bill for presumed consent to organ donation. H. 57 states that “[a]ll Vermont residents 18 years of age or older shall be presumed to consent to making an anatomical gift of some or all of their organs, eyes, tissues, or a combination thereof upon their death for the purpose of transplantation, therapy, research, or education.
The bill, if passed, would give the organ …

By Caroline Song
Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero claims that he will be able to perform a human head transplant as soon as 2017. Two major hurdles to such a surgery still exist: an inability to successfully fuse together disparate spinal cords and the body’s sometimes negative immunological response to transplanted organs. Canavero believes that these obstacles will be overcome in the near future.
Canavero first proposed the idea in 2013, as a …