By Ellen Arkfeld
Congratulations to the excellent team at NYU Langone Medical Center! We are inspired by the team’s unique medical achievement of the most extensive face transplant and proud of the contribution of one of our honorable GBI Board of Directors’ members, Dr. Bruce Gelb.
NYU Langone Medical Center has announced the success of the first full-face transplant.  The surgery is also the first of its kind to be performed on …

New York City | July 11-22, 2016
​Global Bioethics Initiative in partnership with New York Society for Ethical Culture invite students and professionals worldwide to attend the International Bioethics Summer School in Manhattan, New York City, 2016. Join us for this one-of-a-kind educational opportunity! The School Venue is The New York Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan, NYC. Click here to Apply Now! *Students may apply to attend the Summer Program as well as to intern at GBI. For information regarding …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
54-year-old Nicolas Bonnemaison has been convicted of killing a patient in a high-profile trial in France. He was charged with the deaths of seven elderly patients. He was found guilty on six of those counts. He received a two-year suspended sentence. Prosecutor Olivier Tcherkessof said that the doctor is “not a killer,” but he is still responsible for the deaths of his patients.
Bonnemaison’s conviction came amidst a heated …

By Ellen Arkfeld
A new heart transplant technique in Australia has the potential to increase the number of heart transplants by 30 per cent. This could be extremely beneficial to patients in Australia as the country has a shortage of organ donors: only 100 hearts are transplanted in Australia every year, and around 1,600 people are on organ transplant waitlists at any given time.
This technique enables hearts to be taken from …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
A fourteen-year-old girl who was born via in vitro fertilization was ordered by a high court in London to stay in touch with her biological father and his father’s civil partner.
The girl lives with her mother and her mother’s civil partner. She has had very little contact with her biological father and his partner, and did not wish to spend more time with them. The girl’s biological mother …

By Ellen Arkfeld
In recent years, doctors in the UK have noted that younger women are more frequently opting to conceive through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF). For some, this process provides the opportunity to have children while remaining virgins.
The National Health Service (NHS) only covers IVF treatment for heterosexual women who have been trying to conceive via natural means for at least two years. But at least five clinics in the UK …

by Farzana Paleker
California joined Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont as the fifth state to legalize physician-assisted death when Governor Jerry Brown signed the End of Life Option Act on October fifth. The legislation was propelled to the top of California’s public consciousness following the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard.
In 2014, 29-year-old Maynard moved from California to Oregon after being diagnosed with incurable brain cancer to take advantage of Oregon’s Death …

by Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Independent experts of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee released a report calling for a temporary moratorium on edits to the human genome that could be inherited by future generations.
A new genome editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 has made it possible for scientists to manipulate DNA easily and efficiently. While these manipulations can treat and cure certain diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and some types of cancer, they can also be used …

by Bobby Thomas
The United States currently does not fund research-involving genetic editing of embryos. Yet given the rate of progress in the field of genetics, many feel the time to act is now. The Hinxton Group—an international consortium of policy experts, bioethicists, and researchers that conduct research on stem cells, and ethics and the law—states that, “there is a pressure to make decisions” and argues for embryonic gene editing.
Yet, they …

by Richard Balagtas
In what seems like a dream, the cure to cancer may soon be a reality. For the first time, scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida have been able to turn aggressive breast, lung, and bladder cancer cells back into harmless benign cells. The solution: discovering a way to stop cancerous cells from constantly dividing and replacing themselves.
In healthy tissue, it is normal for cells to divide and …