By Richard Balagtas
The organ donation industry rakes in some $20 billion every year. Non-profit companies, such as Gift of Life and CORE, are key contributors. According to their 2012 tax forms, these two non-profits have a combined value of almost $100 million. While money is important for building and growing an industry, one wonders how much difference this capital would make if it were invested directly into saving lives instead of …

By Caroline Song
The Delhi government has been cracking down on private hospitals’ practices of donating corneas to foreigners. In 2014, the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Rules proclaimed that Indian patients are to take priority over foreign nationals. Due to concerns that this rule wasn’t being followed, the state government of Delhi introduced a new restriction. Now, in order to be able to transplant corneas into foreign nationals, a hospital …

By Rose Bowen
Recently, a 36-year-old Swedish woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy, making her the first woman to perform this feat with a transplanted uterus. The new mother, who has asked to remain anonymous, was told by her doctor that she did not have a womb when she was a teenager. In 2013, she became one of nine women to receive a transplanted uterus.
The success of this initial uterus …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Iran’s Health Ministry recently reported that 300 patients are in need of lung transplants, and only 60 are currently on the waiting list.
In an effort to procure more lungs for donation, doctors in Iran are stepping up their efforts to obtain prompt donation consent from the families of brain dead patients. Once a patient suffers brain failure, the lungs are the first organs to stop working. In order …

Interested in getting an overview of bioethics? A Manhattan-based NGO, the Global Bioethics Initiative, has organised a bioethics summer school in June and July. We asked Dr Ana Lita, the organiser, to explain what’s happening.
Global Bioethics Initiative works closely with the United Nations and its agencies. What interest does the UN have in bioethics?
The Global Bioethics Initiative is a not-for-profit international organization founded in 2011. We keep the international community, …

By Caroline Song
A team of researchers at Duke University has sparked an ethical debate with one of their current projects: they remove kidneys from aborted human fetuses and implant them into rats so they can develop and become larger. It is the researchers’ hope that they will be able to grow the organs large enough to be viable for transplantation into humans.
One of the co-authors of the study, Eugene Gu, …

By Elizabeth Yuko, Ph.D.
Between adoption and advancing reproductive technologies, there are ever-increasing options for individuals and families who wish to have a baby. Recent reports indicate that the high costs associated with these processes have resulted in some using crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter.com and GoFundMe.com to raise money for fees associated with adoption, surrogacy, and assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Indeed, certain forms of assisted reproduction raise ethical questions in and …

Graduations always signify turning points; we’re so glad that our participants spent these past few weeks with us, and we hope they have learned a lot! We know we have! It is our hope that our students will take what they have learned through our summer program and apply it to their future endeavors, whatever they are. We also hope that we have inspired all of them to think creatively, …

by J. Adebukola Awosogba, MA
It has been 43 years since the media learned of the federally funded Tuskegee Syphilis study, and just 5 years since the US apologized for conduct of unethical STD research in Guatemalan prisons and mental institutions during the 1940s. In order to investigate and prevent such atrocities, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, established in 2009 by executive order, provides a forum for …

By Caroline Song
A story recently published by ABC News focuses on the Knickerbockers, a young family from Huntley, Illinois. Their son, Noah Knickerbocker, was born with an aortic valve stenosis and needed a heart transplant to survive. Since coming into the world five months ago, Noah has received care from the Wisconsin Children’s Hospital. During an attempt to raise money for the procedure, Noah’s parents fell victim to a GoFundMe …